Overclocking Failure

Hello all,

First time poster, but long time reader. I've been the happy owner of multiple Digital Storm systems for several years now. Recently I've had an issue on my 4 year old system.

I booted it up today and was greeted with a message "Overclocking Failure".

I can hit F1 and enter the BIOS, and did try stepping through some basic troubleshooting.

I've reloaded the OC profile in the tools tab, and I've turned off XMP in an effort to try and "reset" the system.

Additionally I checked all of the components (GPU, CPU, RAM, etc) to ensure that they were in fact seated snugly (I did this because I did recently move and thought that perhaps something had come unseated or had been shaken loose).

I have had some success in getting back to booting to windows (windows 10) but after about 5-8 minutes the system will shut off completely, then appear to restart...at this point the PC will start...begin to load...then shut off...then start again...begin to load...then shut off.

If I hard shut-down (by holding the power button) and let it sit for a while...it will boot up as normal, but will cycle back to the original "Overclocking Failure" message.

The system has been overclocked from purchase...

Here are some of the system details to start, but I can provide more if necessary:

Processor: Intel Core i7 4790K 4.0 GHz (Codename Devils Canyon) (Unlocked CPU) (Quad Core)

Motherboard: ASUS Z97-C (Intel Z97 Chipset) (No SLI Support)

CPU Boost: Stage 1: Overclock CPU 4.0GHz to 4.4GHz

I'm somewhat of a novice when it comes to troubleshooting but can easily follow directions.

Any idea where to start on this problem?

Thanks all for any help that you may be able to provide.

- Giz

I clean it pretty regularly, so dust isn't the issue. As usual Digital Storm did a fantastic physical setup so it's easy to keep clean.

I pulled the CMOS battery and rebooted. It seems to be working pretty well now, I need to confirm somehow that I have the right overclocking profile loaded though...CPUZ will probably show that for me.

Also I just went in and reseated everything to make sure...that may have fixed something as well.

When you say vcore bump, I don't know what that means or how to implement it.

The reason the problem appears to be fixed after removing cmos batty is because, chances are, you lost your overclock in Bios.   CPUZ like you said will verify that while stressing the cpu.

Vcore is the voltage added to the cpu to allow it to run on higher overclock.    Higher overclock means higher voltage on core to run it.     It’s done in Bios.

Temps first, then ram, then overclock tweaking.