What are examples of system failure do to overheating?

I am using the system in my signature, and have been having issues when overclocked higher than what the sig currently shows. The machine was running 2.7gig @ 1.6v no prob for awhile. I have other threads going to address that however, so basically my main question for the cooling thread is this: What are some examples of system errors/failure due to overheating? I get blue screens complaining about my video card when I overclock my processor any higher than what it is, and also get this horrendous sound loop sometimes that loops whatever sound I was playing, but in between each loop, I get this ungodly screeching/static out of my speakers as well and I have to kill the power....it's very not cool and it usually scares the daylights out of me. Needless to say, I haven't pushed any further anymore as it feels futile, but I was wondering if those two instances are evidence of overheating, as well as what other types of overheating errors can occur or that you all have experienced.

And, related to my problem, if those are related to heating, could my northbridge cooler be insufficient or not have a good layer of TIM on it? I didn't check it, and am going to be kicking myself when I go home to take it off and find some of that disgusting white paste barely covering my heatspreader....

Your sysmptoms commonly come from instability, an effect of either too little voltage or too high of temperature, or both. A bad TIM layer could possibly be a contributor. Better northbridge cooling could help, but too hard to tell from the info given.

More information such as your temperatures for the case and CPU would help more for determining the problem.

Heh well I'll gladly offer up anymore info I can serve.

I was using a socket 754 MSI board in the same case using the same cooling, except my northbridge was cooled with an aftermarket cooler and I used Arctic Silver 5 on it. So the cooling, fans, etc are all the same on this new setup except for the fact that I am using the stock NB cooler since it is active on the 939 version of my mobo, and was passive on the 754 version.

Idle temps according to core center are about 36-37 C and load 48-53 C, with system 30-35 C loaded. However, as many have stated, core center and the K8N Neo2 diode aren't exactly reliable, and on my 754 Neo I didn't believe a word they said. Short of one of those expensive laser deals I am not sure what other means I should use to check this.

Any other useful info I can supply? Much thanks for the reply Voodoo.

korruptedONE said:

And, related to my problem, if those are related to heating, could my northbridge cooler be insufficient or not have a good layer of TIM on it? I didn't check it, and am going to be kicking myself when I go home to take it off and find some of that disgusting white paste barely covering my heatspreader....

Click to expand...

I couldn't get my machine to post with even a modest OC for a while. Then I actually did remove that NB cooler, and yup..... not only was it white, and not only was it only covering HALF the chip, it was like 3 inches thick too.

Pull that cooler off, clean off the crappy paste, put some AS5 on there, and I'll bet your stability issues clear up.

Side note, Try cooling your MOSFETS too. The majority of the Mosfets on our board will fit BGA ram sinks perfectly (two MOSFETS per sink). Get a couple sets of the 3/4" X 1/2" sized BGA sinks (OCZ makes some nice copper ones), slap them on your MOSFETS.

Well, your temps don't seem THAT bad, but if you go through all the other ideas, then you should back down the OC a bit or bump the voltage up more.

Gee, video card and sound problems? Sounds like the PCI / AGP speed is too high. You're sure that PCI is staying at 33 MHz? You have PCI / AGP lock active on that mobo?

Any disk corruption problems?