Am I doing something wrong or reading my stress tests "wrong"?

[Kenaf]

Hey guys,

I feel like probably everyone comes in and says "I'm a beginner and have questions". Hopefully having a post like this isn't breaking any rules.. but since I've read that each system overclocks differently, that maybe it is acceptable in this case.

So basically, I have an i7-930 with an H50 liquid cooler with a push-pull fan setup. This is my first try at overclocking and I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong. Any help will be appreciated.. so basically, I've been following this guide:

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/overclocking/22106-core-i7-overclocking-guide-beginners.html

I was aiming for the 4GHz mark, but I'm wondering if I'm going to make it at this rate and still have a stable system. In his guide, he suggests running your stress test for an hour, and if no errors return, you're good to go. But then again, I read a post here saying if you run a stress test for 5 minutes and it returns fine, you're good to go.

So basically, I've got it overclocked to 3.8GHz right now. And I've been slowly bumping up my CPU Voltage hoping I would get that stable system for one hour. Everytime I bump it up it stays "stable" for longer, but naturally the temperature is getting higher. Right now I think I have the CPU Voltage at 1.24375 (from memory), and my CPU under stress test is reaching 75 degrees Celsius on occasion (that is the cap). However, the stress test fails after 21 minutes! According to that guide I posted earlier, that guy was getting 4GHz at 1.25 volts, which is what I'm almost at! So I'm thinking now there is no way I will reach that, because I don't think I like the idea of going over 75 degrees on max load (though idle is right around 40 degrees Celsius).

So now, the questions!

1. Under a stress test (I'm using LinX, Problem size 10000), how long until I get an error would you consider acceptable? Should I ideally never get an error? Note: This machine will be used for gaming, so stability is desired.

2. What temperatures are considered acceptable for the i7 930 on an H50 push-pull setup?

3. Anything else I might be missing or not understanding?

Thanks in advance for any help. I'm enjoying myself playing around with this but it is also frustrating that I can't reach a "stable state".

Edit (quick note): I'm using LinX for the stress test and RealTemp for the monitoring. I have CPU-Z too but haven't been looking at it as much.

 

[SecrtAgentMan]

Get to the max that you want to, and then run a stress test for about 6 hours to a day, it'll seriously help for showing an average temperature and to check for stability.

If you just want to check if a certain OC is stable to see if you can go higher then run a prime95 or LinX for 5-10 minutes.

 

[-RYknow]

I think one important thing to keep in mind is that your OC isn't quite as simple as...add a bunch of vcore, and up your bus speed. It's equally as important that your other voltages be tweaked as needed, as well as your RAM being stable.

I think the first thing I would do right now is get memtest, and let it make 10 passes on your RAM (be patient, think 10 passes took me 11 hours? IIRC). If you get zero errors there, then you'll know that it is a CPU setting. Only reason I'm pointing at the RAM, is I just went through a similar situation. I manually set my RAM timings as stated on the package (9-9-9-27 @ 1.65v for DDR3-2000). I found that my RAM actually likes 9-9-9-24 with a 1t command rate (my motherboard was defaulting to 3t for some reason?) running at 1.60v.

Just food for thought.
-RYknow