Also keep in mind that as the temperature changes with the change of seasons it can impact your PC. If you had undervolted your cores and one of them was on the edge a slight decrease in ambient room temperature can cause your CPU to boost just a little higher and if a core was undervolted a little too much it can cause your PC to freeze up (WHEA error).
I found this to be the case where I live in Texas as the fall season has cooled things down a bit.
There is another variable which is smaller than the ones talked about here, but is relevant none the less.
How much dust is inside your machines. I remember back in the day where a friend of mine complained that FS2004 was crashing all the time with overheating, I asked when the last time he had cleaned out his machine and he replied that he never had done. Over 3 years and no cleaning.
He carefully took a small hoover to his machine and he said that he had 1.5” of dust in some places. Afterwards he had no issues with overheating again.
I know that cases are better these days and people care for their machines better but it is something to look out for still. I clean my intake panel every month. It runs quieter after cleaning.
Just as an FYI to anyone reading this, it is highly recommended that you NOT use a vacuum cleaner to remove dust from a PC as the suction can cause a static electric discharge that could damage your PC components. Instead, buy a can of compressed air and use that instead.
Edit: the general advice to periodically remove dust from the insides of your PC is very valid though!
You are quite right it was a small suction-cleaner-thingie that is used for PCs, but I couldn’t remember the proper name for as I was typing. As you can tell I still can’t.
Thanks for the health warning. I’ll just put my Dyson back into the cupboard then. 
Dust filters on fan intakes, and clean them regularly; canned compressed air to blow out what little dust slips past the filter a couple times a year; and (a lot of people miss this one) get your PC/console off the darn floor, away from carpet fibers, pet hair and dander, and general crud that collects at the lowest surface of every room. Just putting it on a low desk shelf a few inches up can make a tremendous difference in the amount of dust your system is exposed to.
All excellent suggestions. My computer sits on two of these ELIVED Monitor Stand Risers, which keep it off the floor and give it plenty of airflow.
uh, there are a ton of other games and software that can put more a beating on your PC than MSFS. If only the game is crashing (CTD), then sorry thats more than likely on the software code/execution, poor exception handling, poor resource mgmt, etc..MSFS runs on user level, it shouldnt even know what OC is or any condition about it…..but if Windows is crashing/blue screen then thats more than likely OC because it operates at kernel level….
I hear what you’re saying, and I agree.
The most demanding thing about this sim is what I perceive as ‘fragility.’
It seems as though it isn’t coded robustly enough to handle variations in system configurations. That includes overclocking.
I could be wrong, but it seems like we fly on a knife edge of stability sometimes.
Bad overclocking isn’t something software can really code defensively against: that’s literally an electrical-level problem.
Just ordered… $21 on Amazon… small price to pay given what i paid for the system.
Of course that’s true. but software and hardware dance a pas de deux. Either partner can make the other look bad.
I’m not sure what you mean. Can you describe this in more detail? How would software guard against a failure of the RAM, CPU, or GPU to operate correctly, exactly?
I should point out that overclocking problems don’t come from “bad code” they come from the incorrect operation of the silicon while processing “normal code”. For instance, a pointer gets corrupted while reading from memory or performing an arithmetic operation, then something uses that incorrect pointer and it causes a segmentation fault, crashing your program. (Or a bit of data is corrupted “silently” such that it continues to operate, but something might be perceptibly or imperceptibly wrong with the processed data, which you might see as a “bug” or might not.)
The main reason that MSFS is more susceptible to problems than other games is simply that it runs both the GPU and the CPU very heavily, whereas most games run the CPU relatively modestly, and it simply puts a lot of stress on the system. MSFS is also an object-oriented simulator with a large number of objects in play at any given time, meaning it has to follow a lot of pointers to things, which is a common way to encounter crashes on corrupted data.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. 
You constantly amaze me with your knowledge of PC engineering and your ability to explain it.
Thank you for contributing, it really is appreciated!
Umm on the cache cores highest boost clock is 5250 additionally the +200 mhz only applies to non-cache cores I set that to -50 since only negative values apply to cache cores that keeps me in the 4.9-5.1 range. MSFS seems to like hanging out at 4.950.
You misunderstand. I’m not saying that either can overcome problems with the other.
I’m simply saying that when a computer is handling complex software, the hardware needs to be running well - and vice versa.
Basically what you said.
Fair enough!
I agree at stock settings a 9800x3d boosts to around 5200 to 5250.
