TH7-II, Volts, Temp (lets beat this to the ground again)

For the past couple months, I have been running my system @115 fsb and 1.55-1.58 volts (hardware monitor) The system idled at around 41 deg. C and up to 48 deg. C under load. Using these settings my PC would crash when my temp went above 48 (what winbond tells me).

So now i had a fear in me that tells me if my CPU reaches 48+ then it craps out.

Well, a couple days ago I proved myself wrong. I overclocked back up to 125 fsb (rambus @400x still [PC1000]) and 1.68-1.72v
PC was idleing @ 44 deg. C and went up to 53 deg. C after playing 15 minutes of a game (wolfenstein, battlefield, UT2003). The wierd thing is, is that the PC is rock solid stable now.

I guess the Northwood likes Volts more than it hates heat.

53 degrees mean nothing to a Northwood. It can't be damaged through but through electromigration due to high voltage. I would not increase the voltage further!

Merkor

Well, I crashed out of Battlefield 1942 again... back down to 110fsb with 1.55 v, cooler temps

when it was at 125mhz fsb, did it crash with a bsod or freeze/reboot? in my experience bsod is mostly because of to little voltage, and freeze/reboot is because of the dram/drcg's cant handle the speed.
this could ofcourse easily be different for you.
besides, my rdram(or maybe drcgs) craps out at around a fsb of 125mhz. from there i have to lower the multiplier from 4x to 3x. this does ofcourse not have to be the same for you, but the standard drcgs on the th7II often have a hard time getting to pc1066 stable.
have you tried to se if your system was stable with a rdram multiplier of 3x when running at 125mhz? i know it isnt desirable to run the dram below spec's, but you could do it to find the max speed for the cpu at a given voltage.
well, just a thought. hope it helps

Yes, it was a BSOD followed by a reboot. I have tried 3x for the rdram multiplier but didn't like the performance (115fsb X4 was way faster than 128fsb X3)

Well, I'm gona finily update my BIOS from 43a to the newest ABIT bios... I will loose my cool 1.85v max (undervolts down to 1.72). I hope my board can get 1.6v with the new stock bios.

Once I played Wolfenstein for a couple hours, then went right to Battlefield 1942 and BSOD about 5 minutes in.

I'm building an air duct for my CPU so it gets fresh air while my tower is closed. hope that helps 1%