Need help unraveling a weird overclocking problem!

[android]

Hi,

I've got a strange one. After many months of rock solid overclocking at 933Mhz (FSB=133), my Abit BH6 has suddenly become unstable, with several Blue Screens of Death in the past few days. Usally it happens when I am browsing the internet. The system will just suddenly crash without warning. The Pentium 700 Flip chip I know to be fine up to 1020 Mhz in my other system. I can't figure out what has changed. Temp is about 90 Far. , so that is not the problem. The Bx chipset heatsink is pretty hot, almost too hot to touch, could that be it?

What ideas do people have? Could it be:

a virus (virus scan shows nothing)

OS corruption? NT 4.0 SP4

the heatsink compound drying out?

loose slocket?

voltage too low V=1.70

Voltage too high?

Memory? I added another 128 to my 256mb of Mushkin Ram. The new stick is the Infinion PC133. Maybe they don't play well together? (But I added the memory 2 months ago, and it has worked fine until a few days ago.)

Hard drive space? I have 277MB left on the C drive which is 2gb large.

Virtual memory swapfile too small? Its 220 MB.


Help thinking this mystery through would be must appreciated.

Android

 

[Bartman39]

Do you have thermal compound under the "Greenie"??? If its getting that hot that could be the cause of the instability... Also yes the thermal compound does dry out after time (the older white stuff). What voltage are you having to use to get to the 933mhz??? I would re-do all my thermal compound area`s and start there... Also put a fan blowing on the chipset heatsink to cool it also... (BTW Artic Silver has made a beliver out of me...)

 

[shiznut123]

maybe your chip is dying

 

[android]

NO the chip is fine, and if I slow things down to 868 it is stable.

 

[MushkinTechs]

A memory incompatibility problem wouldn't just pop out of the blue. It's either there or its not. One of the few problems where there aren't any grey areas, from my experience at least.

Have you ever tried Arctic Silver Thermal compound? Supposedly it doesn't dry out like normal thermal compounds.

I had a ABIT BE6-II motherboard that was maxing out at 161MHz. Adding Arctic Silver Thermal Compound between the chipset and heatsink allowed me to overclock stabily to 167MHz. Now the chipset heatsink is actually hotter than it used to be because the Arctic Silver thermal compound transfers the heat more efficiently. So in your case where the heatsink is already hot, I would start by pointing a fan towards the chipset. If that helps, then you know that chipset overheating is causing the instability problem, and you need to get a better chipset cooler. I would also suggest adding a good thermal compound between the new chipset cooler and heatsink while your at it.

I hear the blue orb is pretty good at cooling chipsets. If you need to glue the new chipset heatsink to the chipset, give Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive a try.

 

[FirmPete]

- Your swapfile is pretty small. for 256MB Ram I'd use something around 500MB swap.
- Perhaps going up to sp5 or sp6. (Don't use sp6 when you use Lotus Notes)
- Internet Explorer update?