How safe is it to stay on an unstable overclock ?

[OC-CO]

I'll try to keep this short, but I would appreciate it if you folk could read it to understand my situation.

After years of owning my i5 2500K and running it at stock, I decided to give it a spin and OC it to 4.5GHz since everyone says it's easy. I do that following this guide (http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...Beginners-How-to-set-your-25-6-700K-to-4-5Ghz) , and right now after all the stress tests and everything the CPU is sitting fine at 4.5GHz, 1.35V.

After that I decided to push the volts lower and see how far I can go. I managed to go to 1.34V where all stress tests still passed and where temps are safe, but when I did the same thing at 1.33V and lower only 1 program gave me BSOD - Intel Burn Test (at Maximum).

The following programs are what I use for stress testing and all of them pass at 1.33 or lower voltage except IBT:


- Prime95 v26.6 (Small FFT's and Blend mode, 6h)
- Intel Burn Test (Maximum 10 runs, Very High 10 runs)
- Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (30 min.)
- AIDA64 Extreme (CPU, FPU, Cache) (1-2h)
- Asus RealBench (5 runs)
- Cinebench (5 runs)
- Battlefield 3,4,1 (2h+)


So far I'm at 1.32V and I pass all the tests stated above with the exception on IBT with full RAM usage, and if I actually set custom settings in IBT where my RAM is 90% of available it ALWAYS passes, but never when maximum ram is used. Now the temps get significantly lower when I reduce the voltage's and I'd rather like to keep it that way.



Now I wan't to ask you guys is how safe can it be to stay on an overclock which only fails at 1 stress test program, because the temps from 1.32-1.34V are quite noticeable.

This PC is used only for gaming and not any heavy encoding, folding etc..., so this is the whole point of starting this thread to see if I should bump the VCore up just because I fail on 1 stress test

My PC specs if anyone is curious are:

i5 2500K
CM Hyper 212+
AsRock Z77 Extreme4
2x4GB RAM
GTX 980 Ti


Thanks in forward.

 

[Billb2]

That's hard to answer since you don't know what is actually failing.

The problem is that, if the failure occurs during a disk write, data could be lost or, even worse, corrupted.

 

[ZGR]

I wouldn't worry about your extreme temps in IBT and other stress tests. My 4.2 GHz i7-5775C is at the limit in those tests, but runs very cool in every game.

I am confident your CPU will run cool even at 1.35v in Battlefield at 4.5 GHz.

 

[Justinus]

That's hard to answer since you don't know what is actually failing.

The problem is that, if the failure occurs during a disk write, data could be lost or, even worse, corrupted.

I agree. I dont think any of your hardware is really at risk in the situation you describe. Your data is the only think you need to think about.

If its a throwaway gaming install with no important data on any of the drives, go for it. If not, you had better make sure it passes every stress test you run.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I'd really hate to be playing a 30+ hour single-player RPG and have a game-breaking corrupted save. The corruption might not be obvious right away, so you keep playing and only find out later.

Why not back it down a notch?

 

[2is]

I personally would never run my CPU at a speed where it's causing a BSOD. Not because I fear for my hardware but because I fear for my software and more importantly, my time. I don't even run it on the minimum "stable" setting because you don't have the means of fully testing the stability of your CPU. I find the minimum stable voltage at a given OC, then bump the voltage up a notch or two and lower the OC by 100MHz.

 

[Dave3000]

Even if it's just for gaming, a BSOD in Intel Burn Test means your overclock is not stable. It can also mean bad RAM, but since your CPU was overclocked, it's most likely your CPU that is unstable at those overclocked settings. I had my i7-4930k overclocked to 4.4GHz at 1.24v (1.192v during full load). It ran various popular CPU stress tests which included running Prime 95 small FFT for about 7 hours without issues at 4.4GHz at 1.22v but I decided to increase the vcore to 1.24v because I didn't want to be at the edge of stability. At 1.21v, during Intel Burn Test, the picture of the flame froze for about 5 seconds but then continued on testing without errors or BSOD so I think it was a bit unstable at 1.21v for 4.4GHz. Vcore at 1.2v at 4.4GHz caused Intel Burn Test to error out on me after 4 runs on Very HIgh setting. However, even at 1.24v, I'm getting weird stability issues in normal use even though it does not happen during CPU stress tests at 1.22v. It could a bug with the program or a video driver issue but since these issues happened during the CPU overclock, I suspect the CPU overclock, so I set my CPU settings back to stock. One issue was that I would get a black screen within only the mouse pointer showing, yet nothing froze and I could still shutdown Windows through the login screen but when returning to the desktop it got a black screen with the mouse pointer only showing. Could be anHDCP issue because my PC was connected to my TV through HDMI or a video driver issue, and my TV was still booting up after Windows finished loading, but since my CPU was overclocked, I have to rule out the overclock but going back to stock clocks. Also Alien Isolation crashed to the desktop on with a message saying that a problem was encountered. Just Cause 3 at one point would not stop loading so I had to force quit that game and restart the game and also when loading up that game, my TV screen went black and I had to force quit Just Cause 3 and Task Manager said the game was unresponsive. Maybe these were bugs with the game or maybe it was an unstable overclock but since I had my CPU overclocked at the time, I suspect it caused by my unstable overclock, especially with the other weird issues I mentioned here when I had my CPU overclocked that didn't happen when my CPU was at stock settings. So even if a CPU overclock seems stable during CPU stress tests for hours, weird things can happen during normal use and it does not have to necessarily be stressful on the CPU for weirdness to happen.

 

[SPBHM]

you could simply drop 100MHz and it should be good to go, actually a lot of times I actually test stability at slightly higher clock than I intend to run.
often it's a good idea to drop a OC by 3% making your PC more stable and being hard to notice the performance loss.


but, if games run stable for hours, it's normally ok.

 

[Dave3000]

By the time you want to overclock your current CPU, there will be CPU's that are faster or as fast at stock settings. How much more performance past stock do you get anyways if you are lucky enough to have a top quality chip? 18%-20% at most in CPU intensive games but with no guarantee of stability and weird issues that may crop up that make you wonder if it's a bug in the game, video driver issue, or an unstable overclock? The OP might be better off just upgrading to a faster CPU and replacing his motherboard and RAM and not deal with the hassles of overclocking. An i7-7700k runs it's 4-core turbo boost at 4.4GHz stock and that is faster than a i5-2500k overclocked to 4.5GHz , and without stability issues, plus you get much more memory bandwidth on the i7-7700k than the i5-2500k which will also help with game performance. I'm even thinking about upgrading to an i7-8700k soon or a Ryzen 1800x and I have an i7-4930k that even when overclocked to 4.4GHz still can't match a 7700k at stock in CPU intensive games plus I was questioning the stability of it when my CPU was overclocked to 4.4GHz.

 

[OC-CO]

Ok, thanks for all the replies guys.

I think I might revert to 1.34V to save myself of starting new games in games I play, but do you think for an i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz that temps between 60-70C when gaming is high ?

Thanks.

 

[2is]

Your temps are fine

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The sweet spot is in that voltage range between 1.33 and 1.36 if I remember. I have a 2700K that will run at 4.7 and 1.38 to 1.39V. For 4.4 or 4.5, there shouldn't be a problem unless the cooling solution is minimal. The 2700K used an EVGA "Superclock" cooler, later cryptically renamed as a model-code.

BSODs are caused as often by a driver conflict or malfunction. When overclocking, having maybe two or three BSOD experiences is a good thing, if you can analyze the stop-code and correct the indicated problem right away. Nor are they so bad if the OS completes creation of a dump file that can be analyzed by BlueScreenView. Of course, I consider it a mark of my own cunning that I finished tuning my Skylake with at most 5 BSODs. It's nice to hone in on a reasonably-stable range of voltages and clocks so that the failures are indicated by the stress-software and the OS either recovers or never flinches.

 

[Dave3000]

By the time you want to overclock your current CPU, there will be CPU's that are faster or as fast at stock settings. How much more performance past stock do you get anyways if you are lucky enough to have a top quality chip? 18%-20% at most in CPU intensive games but with no guarantee of stability and weird issues that may crop up that make you wonder if it's a bug in the game, video driver issue, or an unstable overclock? The OP might be better off just upgrading to a faster CPU and replacing his motherboard and RAM and not deal with the hassles of overclocking. An i7-7700k runs it's 4-core turbo boost at 4.4GHz stock and that is faster than a i5-2500k overclocked to 4.5GHz , and without stability issues, plus you get much more memory bandwidth on the i7-7700k than the i5-2500k which will also help with game performance. I'm even thinking about upgrading to an i7-8700k soon or a Ryzen 1800x and I have an i7-4930k that even when overclocked to 4.4GHz still can't match a 7700k at stock in CPU intensive games plus I was questioning the stability of it when my CPU was overclocked to 4.4GHz.

Well even with my CPU at stock speeds my PC is acting unstable now. Borderlands Pre-Sequel froze on me while playing but the music continued playing. I probably damaged my CPU from the overclock? I also have a factory-overclocked graphics card but factory-overclock is stock settings for my graphics card since it's not user-overclocked so the manufacturer guarantees a factory-overclock to be stable.

 

[2is]

Factory overclocks are usually stable but not always. I would start by reinstalling your drivers though.