The last few years I’ve been using a LianLi case, Enermax PSU (cost around $120) with a Swiftech water cooler. Twin radiators in the front only cooling the CPU.
Mainboard is an Asus P5BDelux-WiFi, CPU a C2D 6400, HighPoint SATA PCIe RAID controller, ATI X1900xtx video card, Maxtor 400GB drives, 2GB G.Skills PC2-6400phu1
Vista Ultimate 32 retail, ran the beta till February – its been great. Viva La Vista except OGL doesn’t work
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I had the machine at 445x8 for the longest time (since October of last year). Voltage fairly high at 1.55v, mem at 1:1 (4-4-4-12) 2.35v, NB/SB voltage up too. Again, been doing this for a long time – tried dozens of combos till I settled on this on. Prime stable.
After having issues suddenly a week or so ago, I had to restore the system due to horrible system instability (crashes constantly, hard drive errors, services wont start and stop suddenly) after the restore and setting the ststrem at the stock clock (SPD) all was perfectly fine again, completely back to normal, rock solid and not overclocked at all, I ran it that way for two days without any problems at all – very happy.
I then bumped up the OC to modest 420Mhz which was below the usual 445+ I had been running for months. System became unstable immediately. I monitored temps which never went much above mid 40’s. I dropped memory timings at 420 (1:1) from 4-4-4-12 to 5-5-5-15 which the system SPD’ed at when at stock clock at 400Mhz (2:3). Same instabilities. The system has sporadic explorer and IE failures, services fail or wont’ start and eventually the system will re-boot. Once then twice then more frequently till it won’t boot again!
It will NOT run overnight running lets say, iTunes and I didn’t even bother running Prime95.
If its not overclocked it’ll run iTunes overnight fine and Prime endlessly. So this is definitely a sudden overclock problem.
I tried all different and mild OC’s but NONE will work. System simply doesn’t’ want to be overclocked anymore yet at a measily 2.1 GHz its fine.
What’s also strange is that when loading Vista, the graphical horizontal bar that swipes across the screen when loading does so exactly 5 to 6 times before proceeding to the next screen. If I OC at all, the swipes go to 13 to 16 times. Obviously its encountering a problem, overall boot time is longer at 3+ GHz then at 2.1 GHz.
None of this was so a month ago. Visual inspection shows the computer looks fine, all working and running cool.
Lastly, after a few hours of OCing and crashing, the system becomes corrupt and needs to be restored from backup!
My first guess would be the motherboard is going bad, my second guess is that the CPU is failing. Both have been given way more voltage then they were designed to have. Cooling was never an issue for me. CPU always ran relatively cool and the case is very well ventilated and has giant fans blowing down and around the board.
At stock clock;
E6400 - 8x266=2133 1.3v
G.Skills at 400MHz (2:3) SPD’ed 5-5-5-15.
P5B-Deluxe bios 0711 2.4, 9/29/2006 8.00.12
OCCT v1.10 - 100% 2X CPU load
Intel TAT temps 36º - 39º C * not surprised, my water cooler is really good and has always been very efficient. Even with 1.55v (3.6GHz) double prime (beating the snot out of it) temps hardly hit mid 60ºC.
Completes test over and over again.
Running Orthos now just fine. I’ll let it go overnight.
So if its completely stable at stock clock, what the hell could it be? If the CPU and/or chipset was damaged then I’d expect an unstable system at any clock.
Some have said that it’s been observed with the C2D’s that as the CPU and chipsets degrade from overclocking they need MORE voltage to obtain the same OC. This is one thing I have not tried since 1.55v is already fairly high.
Of all the CPU’s I’ve overclocked (and I’ve overclocked many dozens with no exaggeration) I’ve never had this happen, that is a stable OC suddenly gone bad for no reason. I’ve had CPU’s and chipsets die, dead, never to work again at any clock. I’ve had memory fry and all sorts of other stuff but nothing as alluding as this.
I’m at a loss.
Photos of current system before liquid filled.
Not much has changed since these photos except I added a PCIe RAID card.
Mainboard is an Asus P5BDelux-WiFi, CPU a C2D 6400, HighPoint SATA PCIe RAID controller, ATI X1900xtx video card, Maxtor 400GB drives, 2GB G.Skills PC2-6400phu1
Vista Ultimate 32 retail, ran the beta till February – its been great. Viva La Vista except OGL doesn’t work
. I had the machine at 445x8 for the longest time (since October of last year). Voltage fairly high at 1.55v, mem at 1:1 (4-4-4-12) 2.35v, NB/SB voltage up too. Again, been doing this for a long time – tried dozens of combos till I settled on this on. Prime stable.
After having issues suddenly a week or so ago, I had to restore the system due to horrible system instability (crashes constantly, hard drive errors, services wont start and stop suddenly) after the restore and setting the ststrem at the stock clock (SPD) all was perfectly fine again, completely back to normal, rock solid and not overclocked at all, I ran it that way for two days without any problems at all – very happy.
I then bumped up the OC to modest 420Mhz which was below the usual 445+ I had been running for months. System became unstable immediately. I monitored temps which never went much above mid 40’s. I dropped memory timings at 420 (1:1) from 4-4-4-12 to 5-5-5-15 which the system SPD’ed at when at stock clock at 400Mhz (2:3). Same instabilities. The system has sporadic explorer and IE failures, services fail or wont’ start and eventually the system will re-boot. Once then twice then more frequently till it won’t boot again!
It will NOT run overnight running lets say, iTunes and I didn’t even bother running Prime95.
If its not overclocked it’ll run iTunes overnight fine and Prime endlessly. So this is definitely a sudden overclock problem.
I tried all different and mild OC’s but NONE will work. System simply doesn’t’ want to be overclocked anymore yet at a measily 2.1 GHz its fine.
What’s also strange is that when loading Vista, the graphical horizontal bar that swipes across the screen when loading does so exactly 5 to 6 times before proceeding to the next screen. If I OC at all, the swipes go to 13 to 16 times. Obviously its encountering a problem, overall boot time is longer at 3+ GHz then at 2.1 GHz.
None of this was so a month ago. Visual inspection shows the computer looks fine, all working and running cool.
Lastly, after a few hours of OCing and crashing, the system becomes corrupt and needs to be restored from backup!
My first guess would be the motherboard is going bad, my second guess is that the CPU is failing. Both have been given way more voltage then they were designed to have. Cooling was never an issue for me. CPU always ran relatively cool and the case is very well ventilated and has giant fans blowing down and around the board.
At stock clock;
E6400 - 8x266=2133 1.3v
G.Skills at 400MHz (2:3) SPD’ed 5-5-5-15.
P5B-Deluxe bios 0711 2.4, 9/29/2006 8.00.12
OCCT v1.10 - 100% 2X CPU load
Intel TAT temps 36º - 39º C * not surprised, my water cooler is really good and has always been very efficient. Even with 1.55v (3.6GHz) double prime (beating the snot out of it) temps hardly hit mid 60ºC.
Completes test over and over again.
Running Orthos now just fine. I’ll let it go overnight.
So if its completely stable at stock clock, what the hell could it be? If the CPU and/or chipset was damaged then I’d expect an unstable system at any clock.
Some have said that it’s been observed with the C2D’s that as the CPU and chipsets degrade from overclocking they need MORE voltage to obtain the same OC. This is one thing I have not tried since 1.55v is already fairly high.
Of all the CPU’s I’ve overclocked (and I’ve overclocked many dozens with no exaggeration) I’ve never had this happen, that is a stable OC suddenly gone bad for no reason. I’ve had CPU’s and chipsets die, dead, never to work again at any clock. I’ve had memory fry and all sorts of other stuff but nothing as alluding as this.
I’m at a loss.
Photos of current system before liquid filled.
Not much has changed since these photos except I added a PCIe RAID card.
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