[LiveBrianD]

What do you guys consider a stable OC? I set mine to 1.13125V, no v-droop correction, 160x21=3.36GHz. It got to the 'starting windows' screen and BSOD'd. I upped the voltage to 1.2V and tried again. It booted, and passed 10 rounds of intelburntest (a front-end to Linpack) just fine, 35C idle, 60C load. If necessary, I can start prime95 and leave it running while I go to school.

[waldojim]

Try other applications, and make sure all is good. As long as your temps stay low, and your machine stable, then enjoy the OC.

[LiveBrianD]

I ran prime95 for about half an hour while I ate dinner and it didn't report any errors.

[SnyperTodd]

Prime95 is a walk in the park for a modern system, and 1/2 an hour means nothing in that. If you really want to test with Prime95, you're going to have to go for at least 24 hours, and even then you can't be sure. If you watch, IBT will give you much higher temps than Prime95 will and is a much better indicator of stability. 10 rounds of IBT is good if you had it set for 'Very High' or 'Maximum'. Another great stress test is OCCT. If you can go 10 rounds of IBT at one of the top two settings then a couple hours of OCCT's LinPack test, then it's time to put the machine to everyday use and see how it really holds up. Sometimes a machine will cruise through the stress tests but still doesn't like certain mundane, everyday tasks.

What does your RAM look like with this overclock, have you done anything with it yet?

[LiveBrianD]

Hmm... I had IBT set to standard. I'll retry on maximum then. It seems stable so far. My ram is running at the rated speed - 1600MHz 1.65V 9-9-9-24.

[waldojim]

SnyperTodd, on 26 February 2012 - 07:32 PM, said:

Prime95 is a walk in the park for a modern system, and 1/2 an hour means nothing in that. If you really want to test with Prime95, you're going to have to go for at least 24 hours, and even then you can't be sure. If you watch, IBT will give you much higher temps than Prime95 will and is a much better indicator of stability. 10 rounds of IBT is good if you had it set for 'Very High' or 'Maximum'. Another great stress test is OCCT. If you can go 10 rounds of IBT at one of the top two settings then a couple hours of OCCT's LinPack test, then it's time to put the machine to everyday use and see how it really holds up. Sometimes a machine will cruise through the stress tests but still doesn't like certain mundane, everyday tasks.

What does your RAM look like with this overclock, have you done anything with it yet?

Sadly, I have chips with the exact opposite problem. That dumb little Sempron for example, cannot pass an hour of Prime 95 (STOCK), yet handles everyday tasks perfectly fine.

[SnyperTodd]

waldojim, on 26 February 2012 - 07:50 PM, said:

Sadly, I have chips with the exact opposite problem. That dumb little Sempron for example, cannot pass an hour of Prime 95 (STOCK), yet handles everyday tasks perfectly fine.

Yeah, I quit using Prime95 quite a while ago. I stick with IBT and OCCT, and use SuperPi as a quick reference for relative performance increases/decreases (not stability) as I'm making changes. Now that you mention it, I have had one particular older machine fail Orthos (Prime95) but remain rock solid in everyday use too, but generally my experience has been the other way around.

I assume the 'dumb little Sempron' is the 140's that we were playing around with a while ago? They may be dumb, but they are fun to beat on, and if you kill one, who cares? They were only $30!

[LiveBrianD]

So far it's passed 5 rounds of IntelBurnTest @ Maximum torture. I am starting to wonder if I should've gotten the coolermaster 212 though - my tx3 is a bit noisy right now. (or I could add a second fan to the cpu cooler, though I haven't found any 92mm fans with at least as much airflow as my current one while being quieter)

[waldojim]

SnyperTodd, on 26 February 2012 - 08:04 PM, said:

Yeah, I quit using Prime95 quite a while ago. I stick with IBT and OCCT, and use SuperPi as a quick reference for relative performance increases/decreases (not stability) as I'm making changes. Now that you mention it, I have had one particular older machine fail Orthos (Prime95) but remain rock solid in everyday use too, but generally my experience has been the other way around.

I assume the 'dumb little Sempron' is the 140's that we were playing around with a while ago? They may be dumb, but they are fun to beat on, and if you kill one, who cares? They were only $30!

Yep - a 140. Got it sitting on a new board now. A gigabyte board rocking the Nvidia 630a chipset. Not a high performance board by any measure, but quite an interesting combination. I am using it to test various different cards and software. Found out that two of my "known dead" video cards aren't quite so dead. The interesting revival was of the ATI AIW HD card that I thought cooked itself.

Still, I cannot manage to get that second core stable.

[SnyperTodd]

waldojim, on 26 February 2012 - 11:20 PM, said:

Yep - a 140. Got it sitting on a new board now. A gigabyte board rocking the Nvidia 630a chipset. Not a high performance board by any measure, but quite an interesting combination. I am using it to test various different cards and software. Found out that two of my "known dead" video cards aren't quite so dead. The interesting revival was of the ATI AIW HD card that I thought cooked itself.

Still, I cannot manage to get that second core stable.

I have an ATI AIW 128 (much older card) that literally did cook itself. One day (years ago (probably 10-11 years ago!)) while gaming, I noticed a bright light on the card that I hadn't noticed before. Shortly thereafter, the monitor went black, and when I looked again at the light on the card, it dropped to the bottom of the case. After it cooled, I realized it was a resistor that had melted right off the board. I've been meaning to replace that resistor, but haven't gotten around to it. Even so, I'm pretty sure the resistor itself wasn't the problem, but a result of the problem, and a new one has a good chance of meeting the same fate.

[LiveBrianD]

What temperature did that card run at?