Master Overclocking

I recently built a new gaming PC. It’s been 15 years or so since I last built one, and I’d say I did quite well. I’ve been running “custom specced” gaming laptops for several years due to their portability and ease of use. My new build is an Intel Core i77700k, Asus TUF Z270 Mark 1, G. Skill Trident Z 3600 32GB, Samsung 850 Evo 1TB SSD, Seagate Barracuda 4TB SATA 6GB, EVGA FTW 1080 GTX, Corsair H100vi, EVGA Supernova 1,200W P2 PSU, and Acer xb1 27hu.

This was my dream machine, and I finally saved enough money to build it. It has been up and running for a month or two, and I have an assortment of the latest games on it. My question lies in overclocking— I guess I’m not getting it, so to speak. I’ve read a ton of forums and seen tons of videos. At first, it didn’t seem like my graphics card even “turned on.” Games were very glitchy, and frame rates sucked. I’ve never been an overclocker, so I’m a noob.

I use EVGA OCX software for my GPU, and stock Asus BIOS for CPU overclocks. When booting, OC is set to automatic for performance through mobo, and it says I’m overclocked 9 percent. On my EVGA OCX, I simply run at 120 percent power target, and 92 C temp target, and that seemed to “turn on” my GPU. I get good FPS, but it feels like I’m missing out. Heaven crashes if I adjust the GPU clock offset 25-125, which people say my card should easily achieve.

I have not messed with power in any way. I am afraid of ruining what I worked on forever to build. I’m just looking for OC advice, so I can get the most out of my dream machine. I know how to watch temps, and have an idea how Heaven works, but I feel like my system is capable of so much more, and I just don’t know how or what to tweak to unlock its true power. Or maybe my rig isn’t as powerful as I thought. Any help would be appreciated. –Ryan Havens

REVIEWS EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: Sounds like you’ve got quite the conundrum occurring with your GTX 1080 there. That’s one mightily impressive system, to say the least. You certainly shouldn’t be seeing any frame rate issues at 1440p with that setup, even on the latest AAA titles.

I have to apologize in advance, but there’s a few things we need to get clear before we start. Firstly, how hot is your CPU running after an hour or two of idling on desktop? I suggest using HWMonitor to check this. It’s possible the cooler might not be mounted correctly, and the CPU is overheating and bottlenecking your GPU. Also, are you definitely running the DisplayPort cable from the monitor into the back of the graphics card, and not the motherboard? I know it sounds obvious, but we just have to double- check.

Next up, I’d suggest downloading the basic version of 3DMark Fire Strike, and running the standard Fire Strike benchmark at stock settings (with no overclocking profiles applied in EVGA OCX), and seeing what score you get. Ideally, what we’re looking for, with a base GTX 1080, is a score higher than 17,000 or so.

Also, could you go into a little more detail about these glitches you’re seeing? During overclocking, it’s common to see the screen flicker, or particular textures flicker, when the GPU is clocked too high, becoming unstable. This can look like all sorts— basically, something out of the norm; the colors purple and pink, in particular, turn up a lot in quick flashes, too.

If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it’s possible you’ve been particularly unlucky in the Silicon Lottery with your GPU. And that it may already be at its very limits when it comes to core overclocks, after you set the overclock profile. We’ve had cards in the past that fail to run at their stated overclock profile. An Asus Strix GTX 1080, in particular, had continual bugs, and crashed when we ran our benchmarking suite at its “OC” profile in GPU Tweak. It’s possible you may be in the same position.

If we can deduce that this is the case, then it’s potentially worth getting in touch with EVGA, and seeing if you can RMA your card, as it’s not operating at its advertized frequencies. Alternatively, you could run the card at stock, without the overclock profile, or even underclock it a touch to improve stability.