6700k Overclock became unstable over time?

[Culbrelai]

Computer restarted randomly today during gaming (Not a very heavy game either, Europa Universalis IV). No BSOD or anything.
Afterward I continued playing, seems to happen every 1-2 hours. Restarted 2 more times during gameplay. (Game saves every turn so I never lose progress)
While it's not a very demanding game I do notice it spikes the CPU every so often (it's an RTS game, on the 'turn' it does recalculations and thus uses more CPU) and perhaps this caused to voltage needs to spike above it's setting? I watched the temperatures, they were low-mid 40s during play and spike to 65c when the 'turn' hits and then returns to 40s.
What do you guys think? Or could my AX1200 finally be going bad? I've played 6+ hours previously before today on the game (for many months) with no issues, what do you think would cause my computer to randomly restart now? Played multiple other games with my overclock (Crysis 3, GTA V) for hours on end with no issue. What would cause issue all of a sudden?

I just updated my BIOS to the most recent version, AMD Radeon drivers to latest beta, and turned off the overclock (now its all auto). Wonder if this will fix it or if its time to replace a PSU perhaps.

 

[trents]

This often happens when the overclock is only marginally stable at the outset. When you originally established your overclocked settings, how did you stress test the system to confirm stability?

 

[Culbrelai]

You seem to be correct, I unoverclocked it and gamed for ~4 hours straight on the game with no issues. I guess 1.344 volts @ 4.6 is too low -_- sigh. Admittedly I don't do any Prime95 for X amount of time (considering I use my computer daily and don't have hours to watch it, and I'd like to watch the temperatures so I dont want to do it overnight)

I usually just run 3dmark Firestrike and Cinebench and call it stable, not a very rigorous testing regimen but eh...

What do you think I should try, 1.35v? I get a little worried with chip longevity the closer I get to 1.4v... worrisome stuff...

 

[trents]

Prime95 is not the only good stress testing tool and many in the overclocking community have backed away from it because it generates such high temps. It's great for confirming stability but can be overkill in a lot of cases. It's also true that we are testing for stability not trying to determine the limits of our cooling system which is the problem with Prime95 for many people who don't have super cooling.

Here's what I would suggest and have been doing on my own systems lately. Download and install Realbench. There is a benchmarking tool that comes with this and a stress testing tool for the CPU. Click on the stress testing option button and set the timer for 4 hr. Click Start. Watch temps for 15-20 minutes to see of they exceed 90c. If not, you can leave it alone to do it's thing without worry. Start where you currently are with CPU core voltage and see if it passes the 4 hr. test. If not bump it up a notch. If it passes and you want to try for a higher overclock then bump up the core ratio and the core voltage by .01 and retest. Always add voltate in .01 increments. Safe core voltage for 24/7 usage is felt to be anything under 1.4 by the overclocking community. Just pay attention to core temps. You are safe during stress testing if they don't exceed 90c. Download and install HWMonitor (non pro version) and leave it open while running Realbench in order to monitor core temps.

After settling on core voltage and ratios that reflect stability, safe voltage and safe temps during the Realbench testing just use the computer for gaming like you normally do to make sure it is stable in how you actually use it. If still a little unstable then add .01 ot the core voltage. That should do the trick. Or, you could lower the overclock one notch.

 

[Alaric]

I'm at 1.380v for 4602 MHz.