Please Help! - Adrenalin 2020 OC BFV game profile loss and crashing

Mark Wills · 12 Feb 2020 at 21:15

Can someone please help me. I am a rank amateur using my first PC build. That had been running really well for 6 months. I have a budget RX Vega 56, Ryzen 5 2600, MSI B450 GAMING PRO CARBON rig. I originally did some basic OC using an old version of Wattman quite successfully just following youtube videos and the performance for the price was great.

I have been play Battlefield V and noticed performance in terms of FPS has been dropping. I installed a Corsair H115i liquid cooler on the weekend to replace stock cooler and installed Corsair Link 4 software. That all went great and was controlling fan speed and temps easily at 40 degrees or lower with a CPU overclock via the Bios and had it running very smoothly.

I decided to upgrade my GPU driver to Adrenalin 2020. That went fine and games were running okay but still lower FPS than I had previously so decided to OC the GPU. The Adrenalin software recognized all my games so I created a BFV OC profile which I was tweaking after running some general stress tests using Heaven on global settings to work out my limits. So I upped max power, undervolted, adjusted max fan speed and did some small OC similar to what I had done previously.

That was all running smooth and stable for 4/5 hours when suddenly the game froze and I had to reboot. Temps hadent risen. When I came to tweak the BFV OC profile down to gain stability the Adrenalin software didnt find BFV game or BFV OC profile present. I tried to adjust using global settings, but suddenly my CPU cooler fan speeds were way up even though temps were all low and every time I launched BFV everything froze and I had to reboot.

I tried returning to previous Adrenalin software, reinstalled Adrenalin 2020 (it still doesnt see BFV as existing anymore) I have updated all BIOS drivers, uninstalled AMD drivers completely and reinstalled, reset Windows, reversed the CPU OC on BIOS, still no improvement. As soon as I launch BFV it is like it remembers that BFV OC profile and crashes the PC within 60 seconds. I made the big mistake of running the AMD clean up tool thinking that would be the solution, what a nightmare it has been restoring the PC to functioning at all after that.

Can anyone advise what the hell I should do now? I have the CPU cooler fans under some sort of control using the balanced profile setting in Link 4 (the updated Corsair software had no impact on fan speeds even before this problem), if I go for quiet or performance profile the fans go mad even though temps across the board are below 40. Like I said I am a total beginner so please bear in mind when using technical terms!!

Many thanks in advance

Mark Wills · 13 Feb 2020 at 12:54

It seems the issue is around the new Corsair H115i liquid cooler or associated software even though it ran fine with it for several days. I cant figure out why, the CPU temperature appears to be fine <40 degrees according to Afterburner, but the package temp according to Link software was very high. I read this is a software glitch and the fan speed appeared to be linked to coolant temp not package/core temps, but the computer is running fine with the stock cooler refitted.

LuckyBenski · 13 Feb 2020 at 18:00

If that's the issue, you could just connect the cooler fans to your motherboard instead of the pump/controller. Would that suit your needs?

Mark Wills · 13 Feb 2020 at 20:18

LuckyBenski said:
If that's the issue, you could just connect the cooler fans to your motherboard instead of the pump/controller. Would that suit your needs?

Thanks. what problem would that solve and how would the fan speed be controlled, I presume they would be at constant speed? Would it stop the software trying to control the fans according to the duff package temp? Still not sure why it was crashing the PC, irrespective of how fast the fans were running?

Relentless81 · 14 Feb 2020 at 21:39

Remove all OC for a week and see if you get a crash. The Frostbite engine hates OCs I was in your situation a few years ago with an OC on my CPU and couldn't understand why everything worked fine Inc stress tests but BF would crash, turned out it was sensitive to CPU OC once I removed it it never crashed again so now I don't bother with CPU OC anymore

Just read your post again and might not have OC on CPU, if so ignore above or try removing OC from GPU

Mark Wills · 14 Feb 2020 at 22:10

Relentless81 said:
Remove all OC for a week and see if you get a crash. The Frostbite engine hates OCs I was in your situation a few years ago with an OC on my CPU and couldn't understand why everything worked fine Inc stress tests but BF would crash, turned out it was sensitive to CPU OC once I removed it it never crashed again so now I don't bother with CPU OC anymore

Just read your post again and might not have OC on CPU, if so ignore above or try removing OC from GPU

Many thanks, that is really interesting. I did have the OC on the CPU when the issues started. The whole point of having the liquid cooler was to have that CPU OC. I have removed the liquid cooler and the CPU OC, gone back to stock cooler and all seems to be working fine again. I put it down to a cooler software incompatibility as my best guess and removed the software along with the liquid cooler, but maybe it was the CPU OC all along, that had never crossed my mind.

I have my OC/Undervolt back on the Vega 56 and seems to be running stable so far, but I dont get anything like the same boost in performance or in core frequency showing in BFV that I do running stress tests, but if I OC any more even if I boost voltage BF crashes.

I may try reinstalling the liquid cooler but not putting on the CPU OC to see if you are right when I can face it! Cheers.

LuckyBenski · 14 Feb 2020 at 22:23

Mark Wills said:
Thanks. what problem would that solve and how would the fan speed be controlled, I presume they would be at constant speed? Would it stop the software trying to control the fans according to the duff package temp? Still not sure why it was crashing the PC, irrespective of how fast the fans were running?

Agree that I don't know why it was crashing the PC considering temps were ok. The fans wouldn't be at constant speed - you could set s fan curve based on CPU temps or something else.

Mark Wills · 14 Feb 2020 at 22:40

LuckyBenski said:
Agree that I don't know why it was crashing the PC considering temps were ok. The fans wouldn't be at constant speed - you could set s fan curve based on CPU temps or something else.

Thanks for your input, really appreciate it.

Sorry, with my limited knowledge not sure how I could control fan speed/set a fan curve on something other than than whatever the default setting is, I assumed fan speed was being controlled on coolant temp but maybe it was CPU temp. Couldnt see the option in the Corsair Link4 or the ICUE software to switch it to anything else. That was the recommended software for this product according to Corsair. If the fan headers were connected direct to the MB rather than the fan splitter direct from the pump, what software would I use, the MSI B450 Gaming Pro BIOS or should I use the MSI Command Center or something else? And would I then also have to control pump speed through that software too???