Hi gang, 

Just a heads up about this issue that seems quite rare, but have been discussed briefly here and on the official forum. Thought I'd chime in with some info after struggling with the issue for 2-3 days. 

The issue: Just a short time after starting a flight, my internet connection completely shut down. There was no way to reset the connection as both the ethernet and wifi adapters were rendered useless. Only a Windows reboot would bring things back to normal. I could use the internet for hours - browsing, YouTube videos and so on. But just after starting a flight everything would disconnect again. It was 100% reproducible. 

I've spent several days troubleshooting, trying this and that, searching various forums for an answer. I reset my router settings, reinstalled drivers and so on to no avail. Finally I decided to just reinstall (or reset as Microsoft calls it) Windows 11. Yeah. And still the same issue.  

The fix: I reset my overclock settings in the BIOS. 

I realised that it probably was a hardware issue, possibly due to overheat or lack of power to the Ethernet adapter. So just to check if I could reproduce the issue outside of MSFS, I loaded up OCTT and ran a stress test. And it didn't take long for the network adapter to fail. 

I'm not sure exactly what in my BIOS settings caused the issue as I've been stable for several weeks running all-core 5GHz. But apparently MSFS is very finicky about overclocks. The same can probably be said about most modern flight simulators.

After sorting out the issue, I ran pretty much default settings for a while except for an XMP profile (I'm on an Asus Maximus XII Formula by the way). Eventually I've let ASUS set the overclock ("AI overclocking"), adjusting core frequencies and voltages based on current temperatures. I'm running a balanced power profile so that when there's no demand, I'm down to 800MHz on all cores and a Core VID of just around 0.7V. During high demand situations core frequencies can reach up to 5.2GHz with a VID of 1.525V. Which is a bit high for my taste. Hopefully I won't end up frying my CPU...

In the process of troubleshooting the network issue I've optimized networking both on my router as well as on Windows so that I'm taking full advantage of IPv6 and ICMP, as well as making sure Xbox Teredo is running optimally. But that's another topic for another day. 

All very interesting. I have been overclocking my CPU's for years, since probably 2005 or so, and have never encountered any problems that affected my network adapter or router/switch. Of course, with overclocking, anything is possible. Regarding MSFS, I have run both an overclocked Ryzen 5950x and also an Intel 12900K without any ill effects with the sim. Also, that was using two different video cards, a 6900xt and a 3080Ti. That said, I don't push my overclocks too hard, and once I find a stable limit, I always back it down just a tad from there for everyday practical gaming/simming use. @Cpt_Piett, you obviously have good technical knowledge as I've read many of your tech related posts here, so I am not judging your solution or thoughts on this. Just wanting to comment that this is a new one for me. 😉 

19 minutes ago, sniper31 said:

All very interesting. I have been overclocking my CPU's for years, since probably 2005 or so, and have never encountered any problems that affected my network adapter or router/switch. Of course, with overclocking, anything is possible. Regarding MSFS, I have run both an overclocked Ryzen 5950x and also an Intel 12900K without any ill effects with the sim. Also, that was using two different video cards, a 6900xt and a 3080Ti. That said, I don't push my overclocks too hard, and once I find a stable limit, I always back it down just a tad from there for everyday practical gaming/simming use. @Cpt_Piett, you obviously have good technical knowledge as I've read many of your tech related posts here, so I am not judging your solution or thoughts on this. Just wanting to comment that this is a new one for me. 😉 

No offence taken whatsoever. I was very puzzled by this to be honest as I judged my overclock to be stable. The funny thing though is that the network issue just happened "out of the blue". I've not changed my BIOS settings for quite a while, and suddenly the issue just appeared. Just shows that tinkering too much with computers can have consequences I guess 😉 But - at the same time one learns a great deal in the process 🙂

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Just wanting to comment that this is a new one for me. 😉 

Aye, and a new one for me. Hopefully, you totally figured it all out and don't have that problem now.

3 minutes ago, sniper31 said:

Aye, and a new one for me. Hopefully, you totally figured it all out and don't have that problem now.

It's working perfectly now. Saying that the sim has never been smoother will of course seem like a cliché - but in fact it has never been smoother 😛 

Wait a minute - you quoted your own quote?

Just now, Cpt_Piett said:

Wait a minute - you quoted your own quote?

Haha, yep, I did...my mistake. I only meant to quote the last line from your previous post so that I did not re-post the whole thing. Going too fast I guess...better lower my personal overclock 😁