overclock failing after a year

[coreyb]

what does it mean when your overclock has been stable for over a year and all of sudden you can't even boot into windows unless you have default settings.

 

[Cutthroat]

Check your RAM first, it's probably the most likely to go first.

 

[coreyb]

yeah, I ended up bringing my computer into a shop because it wouldn't start up at all. They said that they had to switch the voltage on the ram to get my computer to boot again.

Does this mean I should buy new sticks?

 

[LOUISSSSS]

no not yet. it means you need to test it yourself because the PC guys can tell you whatever they want you to think.

you need to reset the cmos, get into the bios and manually set everything back to default and run memtest86+ for 24 hours on each memory DIMM

 

[coreyb]

And if that comes out ok?

 

[LOUISSSSS]

if what comes out okay? if you can get into the bios?

then u need to set all your defaults and manually set ram timings. then run memtest86+ for 24 hours on each dimm to see if your ram went bad

 

[Cogman]

What it means is that you where pushing you system to hard. when you overclock you don't run your system at the absolute fastest it can go, you want to back off a bit or risk damaging many things.

 

[Gillbot]

Originally posted by: Cogman
What it means is that you where pushing you system to hard. when you overclock you don't run your system at the absolute fastest it can go, you want to back off a bit or risk damaging many things.

I always run my chips at top speed and have never had to back one down. Something is probably failing and he needs to find out what, then replace it.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I once had an ASUS P4P800SE system with a Prescott P4 3.0 Ghz @ 3.6. It was a dream system for about six months.

I added a video-capture dual-tuner card in the interim. about two months later, Win XP Pro began to show lockups and crashes.

I started testing with MEMTEST86+ at the same settings, and suddenly thousands of RAM errors were being reported.

I reset the system to defaults, and all was fine, but any OC settings would cause the same problem. I had RMA'd the RAM, and OCZ sent me a replacement set of XTC modules.

The memory had been OCZ Gold EL DDR-500's. The replacement set was OCZ XTC Platinum DDR-500s. MEMTEST-ing those at the OC settings, the same thing happened.

In brief correspondence with the OCZ tech-support and others, we concluded that the memory-controller had gone south.

Sooo . . . . . I'd recommend that you try and get all the hardware you intend to use into the system before you OC and stress-test. Oh -- one more thing -- I had been using one of those OCZ DDR-Booster cards. I became very suspicious of it after my problems surfaced. But testing without the Booster -- resulted in the same symptoms, and it wasn't the RAM.

I was lucky I could still get one of those motherboards for around $90. After that -- no problem. ASUS, of course, would not honor warranty replacement, because I'd sinked all the Mosfets and other components using Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive (two-part epoxy).

Such is life.

 

[Amart]

I had an issue with the system in my signature after the recent upgrade (RAM, GPU, PSU). The OC wouldn't boot, only stock. I couldn't find the problem.
Solution - I read the O.C. instruction sticky thread again and noticed I was missing some of the advice, like setting the PCI-E to 102 and adding 0.1v to FSB / GPU for stability. It worked.

Make sure you followed all the basic OC steps, as you might be missing some like I did.