Why disable AVX, isn’t that something that loads the cpu in a different way? I think I heard from somewhere that disabling it can allow your OC to be stable at lower voltages but I’m not sure is that why you disabled it?
Here's some info about stress testing with AVX. First, there are different strategies for stress testing and you personally have to decide which one you want to follow. The most rigorous testing philosophy says that your system is only stable when the most rigorous test you can find shows your system to be stable. That means you can run any single program doing anything there is in the world and your system will be stable. A less rigorous testing philosophy says that you are going to try to guess how the kinds of things you normally do with your system might load your system and only test to that. As long as your guess is right and you don't actually exceed that type of load, you'll be OK. But, pick up a new program that might load your system in a way you did not prepare for and it might get too hot or crash or BSOD if your guess is wrong.
AVX is a particular type of instruction in modern CPUs. One can do more with one CPU instruction than without them and they are specifically designed for certain uses. But, because they're doing more, they load the CPU more and create more heat. There are games that use AVX instructions and games that don't. There are graphics related programs that use AVX instructions and those that don't.
It is not uncommon for a system to be able to handle non-AVX instructions at a certain speed, but not be able to handle AVX instructions at that same speed, either due to the heat created by running an intense multi-core AVX load or just due to different overclocking limits for AVX-related instructions. For this reason, Intel and most motherboards added an AVX offset option. This allows you to find the maximum non-AVX speed you can safely run your system at and then separately find the maximum AVX speed you can safely run your system at. If your CPU works for non-AVX instructions at 5.0GHZ, but trying to run a heavy AVX load at 5.0GHZ either creates too much heat or crashes, then you can apply an AVX offset in the BIOS. For example, I have an AVX offset of -2 set in my BIOS for my i7-9700k. Non-AVX instructions will run at 5.0GHZ and AVX instructions will run at 4.8GHZ, keeping my processor about the same temperature and fully stable whether it's heavily loaded with non-AVX instructions or with AVX instructions.
If you are stress testing with a recent version of Prime95, it will automatically detect the presence of the AVX instruction set and it will use it. But, you can modify the config file local.txt (in the same directory as prime95.exe) by adding these two lines to it:
CpuSupportsAVX=0
CpuSupportsAVX2=0
And, then you can test without AVX instructions. To re-enable testing with AVX instructions, you can just put an x in front of each of these:
xCpuSupportsAVX=0
xCpuSupportsAVX2=0
I test my computer both with and without AVX. First I find the stable point without AVX. Then, I see how much AVX offset I need (if any) to keep the AVX test at an appropriate temperature.
