ROG Strix 4090 OC Gaming 24GB
i9-14900k
64GB DDR5 7200MTs
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790
ROG Ryujin III 360 RGB CPU cooler

Maxed the fuck out of Diablo 4 with DLSS, ray tracing, the works. Crashed within 3 minutes with an error reporting, "Diablo 4 has run out of memory".

My Warzone game has been crashing. But let's be real, this absolute dogshit game has a history of game_ship.exe errors etc with memory issues involving anything NVIDIA, so I'm not sure what to think with this one

When I set the PC up, I enabled AI overclock for the CPU and and I enabled XMP1 for the RAM. It was calling for 7200 frequency with the RAM but after the Diablo issue and reading up on it, I've come to realize there's slight instability with the pairing of this CPU/ram? I've since downscaled the frequency of the DDR5 ram from 7200 to 6800, although keeping the XMP1 enabled. I've disabled AI overclock for the CPU.

Thoughts? 5-6k dollars is a lot of money to spend for instability, especially when calling for base #s out of the box and still unable to achieve that. Don't get me wrong, it's not plaguing me with issues, but they've been prevalent since the build was completed.

That gen of CPUs seem to be rather cursed with instability (not saying that's the issue here, but yeah).
Intel's currently blaming the motherboard manufacturers, and iirc new BIOS'es are being worked on to address it, for most of the boards it's affecting: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-issues-statement-about-cpu-crashes-blames-motherboard-makers

A lot of the motherboards (including yours) have the power ceiling set to unlimited, which doesn't respect the cpu's in-spec limits. In other words, this is terrible for your chip.
This video goes over how to fix that. I'd start there personally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcjkNSySzsg

The numbers that Intel enforce, but board manufacturers ignore, are listed here: https://edc.intel.com/content/www/us/en/design/products/platforms/details/raptor-lake-s/13th-generation-core-processors-datasheet-volume-1-of-2/processor-line-thermal-and-power-specifications/

Edit: Some more articles relevant to this issue:
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-continues-search-for-source-of-core-i9-chip-crashes-issues-statement-about-recommended-bios-settings-to-board-partners
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/nvidia-blames-intel-for-gpu-vram-errors-tells-geforce-gamers-experiencing-13th-or-14th-gen-cpu-instability-to-contact-intel-support

This post was edited by lz4 on May 1 2024 12:16am

Thanks for the write-up. I've adjusted a bunch of settings according to the videos/recommendations. Hopefully it will solve the issue until they can address it further.

Anytime! Hopefully dialing in the in-spec Intel limits will fix the issue. However, I'd still recommend checking hardware news sites frequently, since this is still a pretty contentious problem.
I'd imagine there are going to be a lot of BIOS updates to address this issue, from the various motherboard manufacturers, the next few weeks/months..

I'm big with the YouTube these days and have been watching so many videos on it. Definitely keeping an eye on it. I'm really surprised to see how big this issue is and how far it reaches. Thanks again.

Return the 14900k and get a 14700k
Intel seems to be struggling to create stable i9s at this time.
Must have something to do with them easily sucking 300+ watts.

Honestly that's just not an option. I bought the PC to be future proof. They need to figure this out on their end tbh.

With Windows 11 scheduling the 14700k is plenty future proof. 8 e cores for windows plus 8 p cores for games are all you need since current gen games are designed to work with an 8 core zen2 cpu level if performance

DDR5 is pretty unstable at those speeds. You have to basically check what the exact model of RAM is rated for on your motherboards manufacturers website(commonly referred to qvl) and change your settings for it. I’ve also seen some people mention voltage issues on the motherboards being a problem that hopefully future updates fix.

I checked the one for the apex version of your board and the highest rated speed I saw for a 32gbx2 pairing(that I assume is what you’re running) is 6800. I’d check it out with your model of RAM and maybe do a memory test like memtest86 to verify it’s running properly

https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-z790-e-gaming-wifi-model/helpdesk_qvl_memory/

Wrong link. Here's the correct one: https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-maximus/rog-maximus-z790-apex-model/helpdesk_qvl_memory/

Highest one I saw was 7k for a G.Skill set of 32gbx2 RAM