Deteriorating Overclock on Athlon64 3000+

[CrimsonWolf]

Around mid-May I bought an Athlon64 3000+, a Chaintech VNF3-250, and 2 512MB sticks of Corsair PC3200 Value Select. I successfully o/ced the processor to 2.4Ghz with 1.6v. I ran several passes of memtest86 and 24hrs of Prime95, and everything checked out perfectly stable. No errors.

However, yesterday my computer crashed unexpectedly so I ran Prime95 to check it out. Sure enough, Prime95 got an error in 24 minutes. After this, I set everything back to stock (2Ghz) and first ran three passes of memtest86, and I got no errors. Then, I started up Prime95. It's been running for 15hrs so far with no errors. So, I'm confident that all hardware is good and it was just the overclock that caused the crash.

Has anybody had any similar experiences with an overclock not working as well as it used too? It doesn't bug me running at stock, but I'm curious about other people's experiences.

Personally, I think the processor might have overheated. I live in Phoenix and it's very hot right now, so the ambient temperatures in my room have been warmer lately. Any other thoughts?

Here's my hardware:

Athlon64 3000+
Chaintech VNF3-250
Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu (used AS5 with the fan running at full speed)
Corsair PC-3200 2 x 512MB VS (also, I used a mem divider so the ram wasn't o/ced)
ATI 9800 Pro
Antec TruePower430 (all the voltage rails are good)

Thanks for any input!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I think you surmised correctly, the instability was due to the temps. This is a common occurance among overclockers this time of year. Being forced to lower overclocks during the summer in places like AZ and FL. is to be expected when relying on air cooling.

 

[AristoV300]

Well heat plays a big deal so it is possible that it is causing that. Did you check the CPU's temps? Overclocking does shorten the life of the chip, especially when you add vcore. Really can't say but try slightly ocing it again and see where you go with it. You may also look into a different cooling method of you have the $$ to spend.

 

[CrimsonWolf]

Thanks for the help guys. I guess it was the heat.

Unfortunately, I can't really tell what my CPU temps were. This Chaintech board reads CPU temps very low (hehe... it says my processor is 19 C right now) so it's kinda useless. And I haven't tried the beta BIOS yet that's supposed to fix it.

I'll probably try seeing how far I can o/c on default voltage. Once again, thanks.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

probably a summer issue yeppers