Stability obsession?

[StormPC]

I think the only time instability can be tolerated at all is when benching, and even then it needs to be stable enough to complete the benchmarking app properly.

I'm with Sucka on this one. Prime is rediculous because it only tests a minimal part of your system. What good is it if your system is "prime stable" if all you do is game or 3D bench? I'd rather loop 3DMark2001 for more of a system-wide bench. 3DMark2001 can really stress a system, and since most of the stability issues I run into as a repair person are videocard/CPU interface and driver related 3DMark2001 is a great test. 2k3 and 2k5 are somewhat less valid because they are more of a DX9 videocard test than a system-wide one.

 

[MrCooper]

If my rig folds for a week without a single crash or error . I consider it 100% stable. It's helping and doing some burn-in at the same time hehehe Sometimes I would run Cpuburn-in in the backround while im folding, when im not necessarily happy with my temps.

 

[@md0Cer]

Awsome. Great answers.

 

[dropadrop]

I usually try to find the highest 100% stable setting, and back down about 5fsb for day to day use. The reason is, that there is so much going on in the background, that there is no way for me to know if something is getting corrupted while things are seemingly going fine. I think that this could lead to instability on the long run.

Actually if I have bluescreens or shutdowns while searching for the stable overclock, I might reinstall windows just to be sure everything is fine once finished.

I guess if I only used my computer for benching and gaming I would'nt be so concerned, but my wife uses it for her emails and websurfing, and I use it for studying so I want it to work for atleast the few months before re-install without problems.

priority:

-stability
-silence
-performance

Allready this order forces me to keep the speed lower then the maximum.