A look at the Windows Event Viewer after a crash could also help.
Otherwise, possible causes are also the power supply unit and the graphics card.

Check the water cooling if everything is intact. Sometimes the CPU is so hot that your PC shuts down.

Please deactivate overclocking.
Overclocking is for gamer PCs not for musicians PCs and stresses the CPU - it also affects the service life of the CPU.

 

Last edited: May 19, 2021

some drivers are better than others
soem work well on mac like the NI shit
RME do Very well for decades now (on all Supported systems)

i wouldnt bet my house on it

 

automatic overclocking means your processor is most likely not providing consistent sustained high performance,
audio interface driver and its audio buffer directly defines how much workload your processor needs to handle before audio buffer gets flushed and audio lost - which may result in crackles and dropouts,
since you have Komplete Audio 6 interface which I'm familiar with, make sure to set buffer size divideable by 128 (so 128, 256 or 512...definitely not 192 which is default for some reason), and also make sure you're using computer's usb port with stable voltage delivery (which majority of nowadays casual gaming motherboards and laptops sadly cannot provide),
AND make sure in Windows power settings you have disabled selective usb suspend - for some reason Microsoft thinks it's great idea to turn off usb ports power, even at high performance mode in Windows

 

That 240 AIO is okay for a non-overclocked i9. A 360 is more in line for that CPU. A Noctua cooler rated for that CPU with a push-pull fan set would be a much better long-term option.

Some other things to consider:

• Make sure that the power supply can deliver what is required for the 12V & 5V rails.
• If the video card has multiple power connectors, use both (PCIe clot can only deliver 75 watts max).
• Pull memory and any PCIe cards & check for discoloration or contamination. A swipe with alcohol on a q-tip or alcohol wipe will ensure connectors are clean.
• Pull AIO mount from CPU & check spread pattern for evenness.
• Release CPU & check for miss-aligned pins in the socket. Make sure CPU is firmly in place before clamping. Poor CPU pin contact can cause weird system issues mostly related to memory.
• Clean & re-paste with a generous amount of good quality thermal paste (never trust pre-applied thermal paste).
• Take care when remounting the AIO block to unsure a slow diagonal cross pattern is used while tightening. Uneven pressure, not enough or, too much pressure can be problematic.
• As mentioned by myself & others, do not over-clock. Let the CPU boost using the Intel guidelines/design specifications. Especially with only a 240mm AIO.
• The GPU should be in a PCIe x8 slot to reduce lane usage.

Not knowing the exact system setup (hardware & software), we are left giving you ideas to fix known issues. Your are of course free to ignore anything put forth. Just take the advice on over-clocking.

 

See this article from Scan Pro UK

The main area of interest from that article:

Regarding all core boosting, as already noted the X299 platform is simply running too hot for this to be viable without some much heavier duty cooling, due in large to the 260w+ power draw that it requires when clocked up. Whilst my standard cooler can handle it, by the time you’ve ramped up the cooling to that level it’s not exactly ideal for an audio recording setup.

AMD has suggested not overclocking the chips themselves this generation, rather letting the system manage it for you. Indeed, so far in practice I’ve seen that any attempt to carry out a manual overclock will then tend to restrict the RAM clocking we can then carry out. Given that optimizing the RAM gives us far more benefit over adding a few hundred MHz to the CPU itself, we’ve chosen to go that route instead. Our Z390 setups by comparison remain active with an all core turbo setup on each chip and officially rated RAM as the more optimum setup.

 

Of course I was playing all these tracks them at the same time – we are talking about a 10 Core CPU here - each running at 5.1 GHz. :D

Komplete Audio 6 is a solid entry level interface. I had it for years. Not an issue.

The way you are using Kontakt is the issue: your way of using Kontakt is CPU inefficient. If you open an instance of Kontakt, it will reserve one CPU thread. If you layer more than one instrument inside an existing Kontakt "container" it will add CPU load to the same core/thread, so the CPU load is not distributed evenly among the available threads. And once one CPU Thread is peaking at 95 to 100% it will affect the playback engine. So just open every library in a kontakt instrument of its own so every instance get's its own thread and the load will be distributed evenly. Therefore, using a well programmed DAW is key.

Still, I think something is generally wrong with you machine. Disasemble it, refresh the thermal compound with high quality stuff, check that the cooler sits on flsuh on the CPU, check all connections, rebuild it, update the BIOS, Drivers, Windows and your software to foreclose all other possible sources of errors.

 

Well that's not too shabby either, but is there a whole lot of automation going on there too?
I think it will be a little of the way you are using kontakt and maybe even due the libraries themselves, and a little bit of every other instrument you mentioned.
You can also purge unused samples/notes that are not beeing used in the current MIDI.
I thought 10 instances of Massive might be a drain? But I don't use it anymore.

I still sometimes encounter this when I link to certain external visual display monitors! And I have to hard reboot! lol.
So it may be a graphics thing.

Ah. I'll just get my coat!

AH, yea no it's okay, I'll get it. Don't stand up.

Wait, what? It's like yes and no with this one.
I know what you mean about balancing out the core usage, but also there are situations where it is wise to do exactly the opposite and create clever multis.

I'm not sure. I constantly see people maxing out their i7 and i9 models with music production!
It's not very hard to do.

 

so, a "gaming pc", overclocked, with cheap graphics card, overloaded with vsts, with a relatively small buffer size?

and you have pops n clicks? lol

 

@Nick Bellagio Can we see a geekbench score please?!