PC crashes after 5 mins in Resolve

I really love resolve but haven't been able to use it since installing 15 Please help if you can. Consistently, after about 3-5 minutes of scrubbing through footage in the media or edit window resolve and my entire system will freeze during playback. I'm then forced to hard reboot. Upon restarting I get "Overclocking Failed!" on the boot screen. I then have to go into the ASUS Bios and choose what drive to boot to. Windows restarts and is fine until I start messing with Resolve. Premiere, After effects all work great but resolve locks up the whole pc in just 3-5 minutes of use everytime. I've reinstalled resolve 15.1.1.005 and Ive installed the latest Invidia drivers released oct 11th but that did nothing.. I dont know how or where to tweak the overclock settings or if thats even something I should mess with since i dont know what I'm doing. Any help with this is greatly appreciated. heres system specs:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5960X CPU @ 3.00GHz, 3005 Mhz, 8 Core(s),
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Version 10.0.17134 Build 17134
2 X NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980’s
64GB RAM

It seems to me the obvious answer would be to not overclock. Since your system is clearly telling you that's what failed.

Pro's don't OC. When you're livelihood is on the line stability is king. After I upgraded to a 1080ti, my storage (not enough space on the solid state media) is actually the bottle neck right now, before that it was my GPU's. Point is don't risk your CPU trying to attain performance your storage can't handle. Now if during rendering, Resolve is actually pegging your CPU, then maybe you might see a benefit from OC.

You could also have a cooling failure, my fans spin up when using Resolve. Which generally don't spin up using Premiere. Keep an eye on your temps.

Since I upgraded to a 1080ti, I haven't had one single issue with Resolve. But then now I am fully within their last design guide too.

Edit -
After re reading your post, you may want to consult with someone local that does know how to manage the OC. Since your board must have some sort of auto OC turned on. My last Asus board (Sabertooth 990fx)had 3 modes, Eco, Standard, and Performance. Standard was always fastest for me. Asus boards can also be finicky with memory, it's possible the sticks you have aren't fully supported.

I really love resolve but haven't been able to use it since installing 15 Please help if you can. Consistently, after about 3-5 minutes of scrubbing through footage in the media or edit window resolve and my entire system will freeze during playback. I'm then forced to hard reboot. Upon restarting I get "Overclocking Failed!" on the boot screen. I then have to go into the ASUS Bios and choose what drive to boot to. Windows restarts and is fine until I start messing with Resolve. Premiere, After effects all work great but resolve locks up the whole pc in just 3-5 minutes of use everytime. I've reinstalled resolve 15.1.1.005 and Ive installed the latest Invidia drivers released oct 11th but that did nothing.. I dont know how or where to tweak the overclock settings or if thats even something I should mess with since i dont know what I'm doing. Any help with this is greatly appreciated. heres system specs:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5960X CPU @ 3.00GHz, 3005 Mhz, 8 Core(s),
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Version 10.0.17134 Build 17134
2 X NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980’s
64GB RAM

do you by any chance own a ''strongbox''?

I really appreciate your time! Thanks for the information Jeremy I'm not sure where to go to change the overclock. its probably in the bios utillity somewhere? Unfortunately I kind of live out in the sticks and don't know anyone who can help me in person. May have to get someone to log in remotely..

Pro's don't OC.

I understand the geste but, like "pro's do make proper backups" (which we all know on this forum is not the case always) , or "pro's always know better" I would rather say , people that have no idea of what they are doing or should not be near a computer at all should not overclock. People that know exactly what they are doing and have a proper understanding of pc components and technology , can and do overclock all over the planet all the time every day but do it to a stable rock solid and rigorously tested point after finding out at what point your components will fail first and then back of to absolute stability while maximising performance.
Dont forget that a lot of GPU's on the market already come pre-overclocked or with badly tuned powercurves you dont even know about that might even reduce their life in your specific non gaming workload. So in these (admitted more rare and more complex even) cases an underclock or other modification might actualy extent the components life and reliability.
Saved me a hell of a lot of money, render time, wait time etc over the last years without a single crash or hickup.

But totaly agreed that it should absolutely not be done as standard or by just anyone.

I really appreciate your time! Thanks for the information Jeremy I'm not sure where to go to change the overclock. its probably in the bios utillity somewhere? Unfortunately I kind of live out in the sticks and don't know anyone who can help me in person. May have to get someone to log in remotely..

Hi Sean,

I would not play with it myself as you already suggested. Cant you bring it to the shop where you bought it / set it up for you ? These people should be able to easily set it back to the standard speeds / clock for you.
Unfortunately programs like resolve are able to push your cpu and gpus to the max. So the exact issue that result in your current setting beeing over the top for this use can not easily be diagnosed remote . Could be bad cooling, failing fan, bad cpu freq/voltage settings , bad memory timing settings etc etc.
Not something to just play with at random and hope it comes back at boot as you "can" actualy damage stuf by settings alone.

I downloaded msi afterburner and turned the memory and core clock down 100mhz. now instead of my pc crashing, I'm getting a GPU error 6 in Davinci resolve. It seems im able to work a bit longer too before it freezes. This at least confirms that its a problem with my GTX 980's. Let me know if you have any ideas.

I really appreciate your time! Thanks for the information Jeremy I'm not sure where to go to change the overclock. its probably in the bios utillity somewhere? Unfortunately I kind of live out in the sticks and don't know anyone who can help me in person. May have to get someone to log in remotely..

Hi Sean,

I would not play with it myself as you already suggested. Cant you bring it to the shop where you bought it / set it up for you ? These people should be able to easily set it back to the standard speeds / clock for you.
Unfortunately programs like resolve are able to push your cpu and gpus to the max. So the exact issue that result in your current setting beeing over the top for this use can not easily be diagnosed remote . Could be bad cooling, failing fan, bad cpu freq/voltage settings , bad memory timing settings etc etc.
Not something to just play with at random and hope it comes back at boot as you "can" actualy damage stuf by settings alone.

Thanks for the advice. I will contact ADK, thats the company that built this PC. I've been avoiding contacting them lately because their customer service has gone down hill. Their solution to every problem is reinstall windows. I'm fed up with that solution as all the problems with my PC come right back. I guess I will contact those morons unless you have some better advice I can try myself. Thanks for everything!

Hi Sean,

I do a lot of PC building and most of my systems are overclocked gaming or editing builds so I am happy to try and lend a hand if you have any issues with the company you got it from.

More specific information would be nice like full make and model of the motherboard, CPU, RAM and power supply makes and models and details on the cooling setup.

I downloaded msi afterburner and turned the memory and core clock down 100mhz. now instead of my pc crashing, I'm getting a GPU error 6 in Davinci resolve. It seems im able to work a bit longer too before it freezes. This at least confirms that its a problem with my GTX 980's. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Hi sean,

Seems Ray is so friendly to assist you on the issues. One tip that can help pinpoint an issue with one of your 2 cards is that if you have resolve studio, in system settings you can disable and enable one of the cards and see if that helps by checking them in isolation one by one.
Every card is different (silicon lottery) and i have 2 gtx980ti’s each individualy overclocked different. So it may be just one that is kicking you.
With aftrburner you can then turn these babies down all the way and see it that gets you back into some stable zone from where you can do further pinpointing together with Ray.

Still does not have to be gpu as unstable cpu / memory overclock will also negatively affect gpu stability masking the real issue

Edit: just a thought, but how big is your powersupply (and what rating) in the pc. As the 980’s are known to suck a lot of juice , specialy when overclocked, and add to that your 8 core powerhungry cpu when fully loaded by resolve. If you have a small one this can lead to instabilities very easily. When i added the second gpu i had to increase my powersupply as it would just die on me when running render jobs.
Now have a 1000W gold rated beast and made it very stable.
Not saying its the best starting point but if it is (too) small , switching off one gpu should help a lot in running resolve stable if it was a power issue

I downloaded msi afterburner and turned the memory and core clock down 100mhz. now instead of my pc crashing, I'm getting a GPU error 6 in Davinci resolve. It seems im able to work a bit longer too before it freezes. This at least confirms that its a problem with my GTX 980's. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Hi sean,

Seems Ray is so friendly to assist you on the issues. One tip that can help pinpoint an issue with one of your 2 cards is that if you have resolve studio, in system settings you can disable and enable one of the cards and see if that helps by checking them in isolation one by one.
Every card is different (silicon lottery) and i have 2 gtx980ti’s each individualy overclocked different. So it may be just one that is kicking you.
With aftrburner you can then turn these babies down all the way and see it that gets you back into some stable zone from where you can do further pinpointing together with Ray.

Still does not have to be gpu as unstable cpu / memory overclock will also negatively affect gpu stability masking the real issue

Edit: just a thought, but how big is your powersupply (and what rating) in the pc. As the 980’s are known to suck a lot of juice , specialy when overclocked, and add to that your 8 core powerhungry cpu when fully loaded by resolve. If you have a small one this can lead to instabilities very easily. When i added the second gpu i had to increase my powersupply as it would just die on me when running render jobs.
Now have a 1000W gold rated beast and made it very stable.
Not saying its the best starting point but if it is (too) small , switching off one gpu should help a lot in running resolve stable if it was a power issue

I disabled one of the Cards in Resolve and the crashes have stopped! Thanks so much for the advice. so perhaps that one card is giving me trouble?

Hi Sean,

I do a lot of PC building and most of my systems are overclocked gaming or editing builds so I am happy to try and lend a hand if you have any issues with the company you got it from.

More specific information would be nice like full make and model of the motherboard, CPU, RAM and power supply makes and models and details on the cooling setup.

Thanks Ray! I disabled one of the Cards in Resolve like Glenn suggested and the crashes have stopped.. so I'm guessing that one card is he culprit. if you have any quick advice on what to try next please share. I'm going to have to get those detailed system specs together for you when I'm back at the office tomorrow. Really appreciate your help ; )

are your two GPUs connected with an SLI bridge? Resolve addresses the GPUs independently of each other; the SLI config may be causing your crash.

Hi Sean,

Good that you at least got it stable with my suggestion. That is an important beginning point to more comfortably figure out what is going on.
Now if you switch to the other card in single card operation and it does crash again, that would point to something with that specific card, either configured wrong or physicaly wrong.
If however it also runs fine on the other card in single card mode it points more to my earlier suggestion regarding stable power delivery.
Another often seen possibility could be thermal problems when both cards operate at full. Your cards as well as your cpu do create a lot of heat and only seriously proper cooling keeps your system stable when you push these to the max , which resolve easily does.
Of course there are thousands of more options but these are some often found to lead to the type of behavior you described

Hi Sean,

I do a lot of PC building and most of my systems are overclocked gaming or editing builds so I am happy to try and lend a hand if you have any issues with the company you got it from.

More specific information would be nice like full make and model of the motherboard, CPU, RAM and power supply makes and models and details on the cooling setup.

Thanks Ray! I disabled one of the Cards in Resolve like Glenn suggested and the crashes have stopped.. so I'm guessing that one card is he culprit. if you have any quick advice on what to try next please share. I'm going to have to get those detailed system specs together for you when I'm back at the office tomorrow. Really appreciate your help ; )

No Problem!

As you can assign individual cards and have successfully tried it with one, now try it with only the other enabled and test again.

If they run OK individually then SLI (if enabled with the bridge connected) could be the problem as Glenn suggested.
If you are running full SLI then check the SLI bridge is not faulty. A faulty bridge can cause SLI dropout which can crash the system.

The easiest way to do a full hardware check on the system is with Prime95 for the CPU, MEMTest for the RAM and FurMark for the graphics cards**. They will test each component individually.
Maybe do a full run of tests by installing one card, testing it, repeating with the other card and then if they are OK, test again with the dual cards, with and without SLI enabled.

If SLI is not enabled (check the nVidia control panel for confirmation) then update your graphics drivers fully and check again. A full 'clean' reinstall may be required (which you can select within the driver install) rather than just an update to clear any settings that may be causing an issue.

**As a caveat to the hardware testing statement - while modern CPUs and graphics cards should throttle if they hit their temperature limits you still need to be very careful in case your issue is actually heat related!
It is very common for system builders to use either very cheap thermal compound or even forget to put thermal compound on the CPU at all!

I'll try to keep an eye on any responses as best I can.

Ps Resolve does NOT support SLI but needs to be able to drive the cards idividualy

Ps Resolve does NOT support SLI but needs to be able to drive the cards idividualy

That's probably that then!

He can confirm this by physicaly removing the sli bridge (connector between the 2 cards) and run resolve again with 2 card after succesfully testing both cards individualy.
Should be removed regardless to continue further troubleshooting if still fails on 2 cards. Power check would be next step if individual runs fine but together fails.

Well, you will overclock if u know what are you doing to get 20-30% or more performance from your system, why not? But yeah, you have to know well what are you doing and why...
Whatever...

What are your pc specs Sean?

CPU- 5960x
GPU- 2xGTX980
MB- ??
PSU-??

It can even be that your PSU it's not powerful enough for supply all your hardware.
Maybe in BIOS you set automatic OC so the voltage of CPU will rise automaticly and your cooling is not good enough and so on...

5960X when overcloced are power hungry, automaticly it will setup cpu core voltage to 1.3 or higher, then you have to deal with high temperatures and high power drain that not all PSU can deliver; when overclocked normaly you can set at about 1.18-1.2V and have stable CPU at about 4.3-4.5GHz and have good temperatures if you have wathercooling or closed cooling loop.
Then there are the two GPUs that when stressed are also power hungry. Davinci Resolve will stress your CPU and GPUs and if you don't have a good power supply it may froze. Premiere Pro is not that power hungry as Resolve is..

Then it can also bee that you have a "broken" component in your PC.

Usually when the PC freeze is RAM problem, bluescreen of death is OC problem but thats not always the case..

In your BISO settings you can search for "load default settings" and try if that helps.

Hi Sean,

Any updates ? How are you doing now ? Did you do any other tests we suggested and did you get any other results ?