Reflected on the previous year's DDR4 and Z690 ASUS TUF boards, 13900k didn't impress. XMP still works, though.
Reflected on the previous year's DDR4 and Z690 ASUS TUF boards, 13900k didn't impress. XMP still works, though.
I quickly adjusted the 13900k during a conference call this afternoon. Luckily, they didn’t reach out. My rig ran on a stable system with a 12900k and memory that passed memtest86. The ASUS BIOS detected the new CPU, set defaults, and I turned on XMP before rebooting. A yellow light appeared on the memory, and I followed the instructions. After about five minutes of OCCT stability testing, everything looked fine. Once the test ended, a BSOD popped up roughly 30 seconds after cooling down. After rebooting, another BSOD followed. I tried power cycling and switched to XMP II. The same issue repeated three more times—reboots 3rd, 4th, and 5th all triggered a BSOD. Eventually, I disabled XMP and waited. The system didn’t crash yet, but OCCT still seemed stable. I’m considering a few options: wait for a patch, manually tweak my memory settings, buy a new Z790 board with DDR5, or just hold off until next year. It’s tempting to wait, but I think my performance might be lagging compared to a 12900k with faster memory. It still runs decently on Cinebench.
Checked BIOS compatibility before adding the new CPU and confirmed the latest version. Running four memory modules.
I used 2 sticks, each with 32 gigabyte capacity. I made all the changes according to what ASUS recommended for this motherboard.
Could wait for a BIOS upgrade to fix memory stability problems. Ensure Intel drivers are current. Upgrading to Z790 might resolve these issues since Z690 can behave unpredictably with RAM OC, particularly regarding motherboard layout and tracing.
I'm worried about the Z790 DDR4 board possibly facing similar issues. I've noticed the CPU consumes significantly more power—around 30 watts—when XMP is activated during an OCCT stress test. That might mean I should consider switching to DDR5, especially if the available XMP memory isn't substantially faster. If I decide that way, perhaps I'll wait until next year when we all need to replace motherboards again.
Keep the 12900K until next year and hand over the 13900K only if needed.
Unpleasant. My Cinebench numbers match the chip specs. 37,000 cores. <unzipping and thonking noise> I quickly adjusted the RAM voltage from 1.35 to 1.30 and lowered the frequency from 3600 to 3200. The timing values come from XMP settings on the RAM, so the performance ratios remain similar but at a reduced speed. It seems to be stabilizing. After several hours of Memtest86, the OCCT failure and idle tests passed. Looking it up, this issue is quite frequent. It could be tied to ASUS boards or possibly a mistake in the RAM training process. Another thonk: