FX 4170 When overclocked, unstable

[clay30x]

Hey guys,
I'm at the point of giving up on attempting to overclock this chip. Right now I'm at auto / default Voltage / Multiplier / except for the power saving features are DISABLED. I'm running 4.2GHZ (4.3GHZ TURBO)

I ran P95 for about 10 minutes and no errors.

First and formost, here are my specs:

CPU: AMD FX 4170
Cooler: CM hyper 212 evo (2 fans (push-pull)
RAM: G.Skill ARES 8gb x 2 (16gb) 1866mhz
MB: Asus Sabertooth 990fx (Rev.1.0 if i remember correctly) (bios: 1604)
hdd: SSD 120
VIDEO: Radeon HD 7870 Ghz Edition
PSU: 500w (using 184w per my batterybackup)

What led to put it back to stock:

I've put about 8-10 hours on this.
Last night I had a 4.5GHZ overclock running for about 6-12 Hours, stable.
Operated the computer normally, websites/gaming etc.

If I remember correctly, the settings I had were 22.5 Multiplier (FSB:200) Voltage 1.41

PLOT:
Around 12 midnight, I was attacked by my house cat and in the terror, the cat grabbed my Headset, the wire tugged on one of my speakers and other stuff on my desk, which had a full plastic cup of water, and violently shook my CASE From what I saw, the water went on the front of my case and top but I didnt see any go in... But on the front it probably hit USB/power switch. I cleaned the water off and didn't think anything of it. 5 min later, while watching a movie, notification says I recently plugged in a USB device and it's not functioning. I ignore it, 3 hours later, it blue screens and doesn't POST. I troubleshoot and find out my CPU is not passing post. (cpu_led) is red. So i find it a forum post that says it could be uneven power..skip to this morning.

So my machine not posting and having major issues with power. I replaced my power supply, reset my RAM and CPU (reapplied arctic silver 5 (grain of rice method), boot, pass post, reset to defaults, (This was probably after about 15 boot attempts) and I am stable now.

So now that you know the machine may have been compromised after last night, what would you recommend to test the overclock-ability of this chip at this point.

I am a novice overclocker. I understand some concepts of it.
Voltage powers the chip
Not enough will blue screen (Ive seen ALOT of those)
My chip seems to run at the very least at 1.34 / 1.35V stock.
More voltage more heat, more multiplier (more clock speed) which requires more voltage to keep it doing it's CPU things, yada yada yada. (i hate that phrase)

So I leave it to you to see if this is worth it to experiment with a bit more, or save up for another chip?

For my work with this chip, even at default operation, I've had some blue screens since I've had this build. (Of course there is a question to if my PSU was unhealthy).

If I need to get more info, I'll be glad to.
Here's what is right now!!:



-clay
failclocker

 

[Johan45]

What is the make and model of the PSU. You may also want to disconnect the front USB connectors on the mobo. There may have been water in them grounding them out. Take a hairdryer or something and dry them out.

 

[caddi daddi]

I would tear it down and make sure every little drop of water was dried out if it.
set it outside in the sun ans inspect every little slot and piece was bone dry.

 

[caddi daddi]

johan45, put some clothes on your avatar!!!!

 

[caddi daddi]

I would look to the first bios that supports the fx processor also.

 

[Johan45]

My kid found that one for me and I just couldn't resist!! The weird thing is it looks like him

 

[clay30x]

That's the first thing I did.
I disconnected the Front USB ports from the motherboard. (That was in the "won't post phase). I can disconnect them but.. Right now, I'm getting no usb errors, system is stable.)

The Make / Model of my current PSU: Raidmax RX-500AF
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152040

I'll look into the BIOS versions and see about downgrading it.(Will probably be tomorrow when I do that..)

Right now according to Speccy:
BIOS
Brand American Megatrends Inc.
Version 1604
Date 10/16/2012

I'll see about scheduling some time looking at the front of my case to make sure that any water doesn't remain (inside the front)
I have a Thermaltake ElegmentG:

 

[Johan45]

I didn't even have to check that PSU I've had one and they're crap. Mine was 730 watts and couldn't run my 965 and 2 gt 9800's constant blue screens. Took me a while to figure that one out.
Check the list of PSU's here on the site if you're going to upgrade it. I don't know if that one has dual rails or not but mine just couldn't supply enough amps. So I would suspect the same issue when you try to OC that chip they demand a lot of power. Do you have another you could test with or borrow.

 

[clay30x]

Oh yea?
Ok, I'll check that list out and order one soon.

The thing is, I before my un-expected rebuild, I had another PSU in there that I thought was good, I replaced it out of thinking the same thing you just said.

The old one I was running was: Seasonic SS-620GM (620W)
My blue screens have happened with both PSU's.
That does make sense if a better PSU fixes it.

So, I just had another bluescreen and made 2 changes.
1st, my CPU (socket) temp as seen in CPUID HWMonitor was showing like 43C temp while my core temp was at around 19C or so.
I checked my CPU fans and yep, they were spinning at 780RPMs because of the stupid (q-fan control) in the bios. Rebooted, disabled that and it's spinning at FULL again.
Rebooted, when it rebooted, and gets into windows, and while it's loading my programs and pretty high CPU Usage, it blue screened.
So I went into BIOS, thinking it's voltage (I didn't read your post at that time), I uped the voltage just a little bit on my CPU from 1.35 to 1.36. Just to see if my chip is power hungry.

Well, it booted back up and such, but your theory makes sense.
MY CPU temp has dropped to about 37C now with the fans moving at top speed.

 

[Johan45]

Well the seasonic should do just fine actually so that's probably not the problem. So can you post some shots of CPU-z main, memory and spd tabs, Also one of HWmonitor open while running P95 for about 20 minutes.

 

[RGone]

The old one I was running was: Seasonic SS-620GM (620W) << that brand of power supply is usually quite good. Much better than a Raidmax. Doesn't mean the Usb wet might not have had an effect on the +5V rail of a good power supply making it suspect now.
RGone...

 

[Johan45]

I'm pretty sure that he swapped them out before the "accident" trying to solve the bluescreens.?

 

[clay30x]

I was running Seasonic prior to the "accident".
The blue screens were pretty rare with the seasonic. I only started my overclocking attempt a week ago.

I just was troubleshooting something with my sound, and had to reboot and it bluescreened again.
I went ahead and turned on my CPU Power Saving features again (CnC and the rest) and haven't got a blue screen since. Will see...

I'll try P95 now with the requested apps and screencap it.

 

[Johan45]

I'm just guessing at this point that maybe it's your ram timings or just not enough power to the CPU. It should run prime at defaults without incident but.... Something is definately off so you never know.

 

[clay30x]

Here you are:

https://imgur.com/a/qIiYl

Requested Pics

HWMonitor
CPUID main
CPUID memory
CPUID spd both slots

 

[Johan45]

In the future can you use the attachment option in the advanced reply. I would start by setting the ram to one of the 933 profiles.
Edit: Also with 16 gig of ram you should probably up the CPU_NB voltage a bit. 1.25 maybe

 

[clay30x]

Oh okay, will do. Sorry about that.

Ok, taking a picture with my phone and rebooting. Will try the 2nd to last one.

 

[clay30x]

Ok, got the timings changed. Thanks.

 

[Johan45]

How about the CPU_NB voltage?

 

[Johan45]

One more thing if you do plan on OC'ing at all you should give this guide a read.