SpyderTracks
We love you Ukraine
I'm almost certain your CPU is not bottlnecking anything, if you do the above tests I think you'll find the CPU is barely in use.
Is it OK to Overclock my pc? Scared to damage the CPU
- Thread starter johnno
- Start date
I think you are right, the CPU was on a very low usage when exporting...Don't get me wrong, It's much faster than my old computer, and runs like a dream, I was just hoping to get even faster exporting times for large projects which can be very time-consuming.
Cheers for all your help!!
SpyderTracks
We love you Ukraine
As already said though, it's not the CPU that's the bottleneck, it's almost certainly your drive setup.
You need to get some NVME drives, and sort out your caches and libraries / plugins.
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
The fastest way for us to help you is to provide us with some hard data on what resources are being over-utilised when you do an export. @SpyderTracks has suggested this already and it is the most useful think you can do to help us to help you....
1. Open the Windows Resource Monitor by entering the command resmon in the Run command box.
2. In the Resource Monitor ensure the Overview tab is clicked.
3. Expand all four sections (CPU, Disk, Network, Memory) by clicking on the arrow to the right of each header.
4. Increase the size of the Resource Monitor output so that it fills the vertical size of the screen (and so that we can see as much data in there as possible).
5. Ensure that the width of the Resource Monitor allows the graphs on the right to be fully visible.
6. Open your music app and start the biggest, slowest, most resource hungry export you have - the one that takes the most time.
7. Once the export has started give it a minute or two to really get going and maxing out the resource usage.
8. Bring the Resource Monitor display to the foreground and take a screenshot (or photo) of the entire Resource Monitor display. Post that screenshot/photo up here.
This display will enable us to see which resource(s) are being maxed out by the export - that is where more of that resource will bring benefits.
FWIW my money is on the drives as well, but we need proof of that.
1. Open the Windows Resource Monitor by entering the command resmon in the Run command box.
2. In the Resource Monitor ensure the Overview tab is clicked.
3. Expand all four sections (CPU, Disk, Network, Memory) by clicking on the arrow to the right of each header.
4. Increase the size of the Resource Monitor output so that it fills the vertical size of the screen (and so that we can see as much data in there as possible).
5. Ensure that the width of the Resource Monitor allows the graphs on the right to be fully visible.
6. Open your music app and start the biggest, slowest, most resource hungry export you have - the one that takes the most time.
7. Once the export has started give it a minute or two to really get going and maxing out the resource usage.
8. Bring the Resource Monitor display to the foreground and take a screenshot (or photo) of the entire Resource Monitor display. Post that screenshot/photo up here.
This display will enable us to see which resource(s) are being maxed out by the export - that is where more of that resource will bring benefits.
FWIW my money is on the drives as well, but we need proof of that.
Thank you so much for the detailed post. As I said, I was hoping that overclocking would speed up the export, but for starters, I cannot overclock the PC because PC Specialists void the warranty when one takes such a step.
The PC works brilliantly, and it is very fast. I was hoping to increase exporting speeds.
Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it!
The PC works brilliantly, and it is very fast. I was hoping to increase exporting speeds.
Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it!
Insane.Pringle
Enthusiast
The Voiding warranty warning only applies if you are within the warranty period of your PCS computer. after that you can overclock the PC.
Whilst it is possible to damage your CPU by overclocking it, it takes overclocking it to extremes to do that (think liquid nitrogen cooling!!) Your computer OS will become non-responsive long before that or it'll just simply fail to boot..
it'll be the other components on the motherboard that will fail to work when the bus speed,DRAM frequencies are too high. besides unless you selected an unlocked CPU when you made your PC component choices, you won't be able to overclock it much
Edit(again): i'm not including voltage increases in this mind you!!
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Martinr36
MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Here's the official answer
www.pcspecialist.co.uk
Warranty When Overclocking!
Regarding warranty on overclocking, this thread is here to clear up any confusion, and set the mind at rest. When you overclock a PC you will not void your warranty unless the PC fails as a result of the overclock. If you overclock your CPU and your hard drive breaks, we WILL cover this under...
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
Does that mean you're not going to give us a screenshot of the Resource Monitor? 😧
No, not at all, I have just changed to this computer and the current project I am working on is very small (mastering) so a reading probably won't give you a good picture of the situation.
I am so sorry for the late response, just hard at work. I will open a heavy project as soon as possible and send the results to you guys.
In addition, I have moved from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and many plugins/instruments for some reason don't open correctly on Cubase from Cubase 10.5, no idea why, so, not sure how accurate the reading will be, but I will give it a good go.
Thanks so much!!
I see, thanks so much! I just saw the message popping up on the BIOS page, and I assumed it was the case that any tampering with overclocking would mean rendering the warranty void.Here's the official answer
Warranty When Overclocking!
Regarding warranty on overclocking, this thread is here to clear up any confusion, and set the mind at rest. When you overclock a PC you will not void your warranty unless the PC fails as a result of the overclock. If you overclock your CPU and your hard drive breaks, we WILL cover this under...
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SpyderTracks
We love you Ukraine
Overclocking is unlikely to improve performance at all though which is why we need to run the above tests to find out where the bottleneck is.
The CPU is likely being limited by the data throughput to the drives.
My guess is that CPU usage will be very low, so overclocking wouldn't have any effect as the CPU is not being utilised to that extent in the first place.
The CPU is likely being limited by the data throughput to the drives.
My guess is that CPU usage will be very low, so overclocking wouldn't have any effect as the CPU is not being utilised to that extent in the first place.
Hi there, I opened a project for which my old computer was suffering. it's pretty heavy with most orchestral instruments loaded, bar oboes, Bassoons and Double bassoons.
The strings feature 8DIO Century Strings, full separate sections, plus Hollywood Strings full separate sections too,
The percussions feature 8 percussions channels,
Also 3 channels with a Liberis choir and I also left all audio exports of the 8DIO which I originally exported on my old computer to give it a break as it was really suffering.
In addition, QL Spaces 1 is loaded and mastering is applied to ST OUT with 5 plugins running. I have used the odd EQ plugin here and there.
Whilst exporting, it was reporting zero hard drive faults, but it would spike here and there, so I managed to print screen one of the spikes.
Overall, I am happy with the exporting time that it took, but as I said, I am looking to improve on that field.
Thanks so much for your time and help!!
The strings feature 8DIO Century Strings, full separate sections, plus Hollywood Strings full separate sections too,
The percussions feature 8 percussions channels,
Also 3 channels with a Liberis choir and I also left all audio exports of the 8DIO which I originally exported on my old computer to give it a break as it was really suffering.
In addition, QL Spaces 1 is loaded and mastering is applied to ST OUT with 5 plugins running. I have used the odd EQ plugin here and there.
Whilst exporting, it was reporting zero hard drive faults, but it would spike here and there, so I managed to print screen one of the spikes.
Overall, I am happy with the exporting time that it took, but as I said, I am looking to improve on that field.
Thanks so much for your time and help!!
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ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
It would have been nice to see the graphs at the right - but the seriously worrying figure here is the 183 Hard Page Faults/sec. RAM is your limiting resource here and since the page file is on a relatively slow SATA SSD they're taking a long time to resolve and slowing things down. The biggest (indeed only in this snapshot) contributor to paging is the Cubase11.exe process, which I assume is your music tool that's doing the exporting?
Overclocking the CPU won't help here, it's barely ticking over, but you need more RAM to speed things up and/or a faster drive for the page file.
AfterThought: Some processes deliberately page out scratch data, this is data that they will need to use later but which doesn't need to be held in RAM. They use the paging subsystem for this because it's faster than a conventional I/O. It's possible that Cubase11 is doing so and it's not really a shortage of RAM that you have (nothing else there is paging) but a poor paging subsystem because of the SATA SSDs.
I would carefully read the system requirements of Cubase11, it may benefit from a dedicated scratch drive on which to store these temporary files and it may be reverting to the paging subsystem because you don't have one. The software documentation should tell you what size scratch drive is needed and what config changes you need to make to Cubase11 to use the scratch drive. This drive needs to be a fast NVMe drive (as does your system drive).
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Thanks so much, that's extremely helpful. I was planning to add more RAM in the near future, so that's great.
It's indeed Cubase 11 that I am using.
sck451
MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
This is by way of technical interest, but how does this hard fault number match up with the 27% physical memory use? Why is it paging when there's huge amounts of RAM unused? My instinct is that 64GB should surely be enough...
Just to clarify though (I can't answer this question) please note that the Hard Drive Fault was momentary and the HD Fault was dropping to Zero afterward, the spikes were very few.
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ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
Both these questions/statements address the same thing really, so a quick explanation...
It is indeed unusual to see a high page fault rate with a low 'in-use' value, but it's far from impossible. The Hard Page Fault rate is the rate at which pages are being read in from the pagefile - that means they were written out some time ago when the 'in-use' value could have been (and probably was) much higher. The 'in-use' value is a snapshot of memory use now, whilst the Hard Page Fault rate gives you a much better handle of what has been happening to memory usage over time. The only reliable indicator of a shortage of RAM is a sustained high Hard Page Fault rate.
The Hard Page Fault rate does almost always vary up and down over time, it's driven by the way Windows (and to some extent the applications) manages RAM. A page fault can happen for two main reasons; either Windows stole (unused) pages earlier and wrote them out to the pagefile because RAM was in short supply and under pressure (indicating a shortage of RAM) or because an application deliberately asked for pages to be paged out in order to take advantage of the more efficient paging mechanism.
Some applications benefit from scratch drive(s) (dedicated to that application) for storing short term temporary working files, I would guess that Cubase11 is an application that might make good use of a scratch drive? If the configuration options for Cubase11 allow you to specify where temporary files should go then direct them to a dedicated (and fast) scratch drive. I would also guess that since Cubase11 determined that it didn't have a scratch drive available, it defaulted to using the paging subsystem for its scratch data.
Given the low 'in-use' figure here and the nature of the application I think that Cubase11 using the paging subsystem for scratch data is the most likely explanation, you'd expect periods of high activity and periods of low activity in that case too. But a RAM shortage cannot (yet) be ruled out.
The weak link in @johnno's system are those slowish SATA drives and getting the storage subsystem sorted out would be the most obvious place to start.
My good God, a lot of this has gone over my head...but thank you so much!!
I contacted PC specialists and they suggested for me to buy this expansion for M2 cards:
www.asus.com
They told me that this will allow me you to mount 4 more m.2 drives (my motherboard can accommodate 2), but only in PCIe 3.0 speeds.
I was going to use the maximum RAM in my PC in the future.
I think I will also invest on the above.
Thanks so much to all here, you have been extremely helpful!!
I contacted PC specialists and they suggested for me to buy this expansion for M2 cards:
Hyper M.2 x16 Card V2｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global
ASUS offers different kinds of motherboard accessories including Thunderbolt™ expansion cards, M.2 add-on cards, and fan extension cards give DIY PC users better choices when it comes to building their perfect workstation or gaming rig.
www.asus.com
They told me that this will allow me you to mount 4 more m.2 drives (my motherboard can accommodate 2), but only in PCIe 3.0 speeds.
I was going to use the maximum RAM in my PC in the future.
I think I will also invest on the above.
Thanks so much to all here, you have been extremely helpful!!