Overclock stopped working

[C Dub]

I built my E6700 system as soon as the chip was available in late August. I was able to overclock it up to 3.5 GHz on air and it ran stable up until now. Keep in mind, when I first did the overclock, the ambient temperature in the room was in the high 80's (California summers with no air conditioning).

Now the temperature in the room is in the high 60's, but my overclock doesn't want to work anymore. I get frequent BSOD's and when the cpu usage hits 100% for too long, the system reboots. So I reduced the overclock and vcore and it seems to have stabled out.

So what gives? Suddenly my chip doesn't overclock as well as it used to. And it was working just fine for quite a few months. o_0

 

[CurseTheSky]

Crack the case, clean out all the dust from EVERYTHING with a can of air.

Slowly raise the voltages and monitor the temperatures with Intel's Thermal Analysis Tool.

 

[C Dub]

Just a quick update after three weeks of torture - I finally found the culprit. One of my sticks of ram somehow went bad. It's the ultra-expensive Corsair DDR2 1066 too... Weirdness.

Anyway, I took out the offending stick and it's once again stable at its 3.5 GHz OC.

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: C Dub
Just a quick update after three weeks of torture - I finally found the culprit. One of my sticks of ram somehow went bad. It's the ultra-expensive Corsair DDR2 1066 too... Weirdness.

Anyway, I took out the offending stick and it's once again stable at its 3.5 GHz OC.

I hate when that happens. That's why I usually try to stay low on RAM and CPU voltages. Most "high-end" memory needs insane voltages to reach its advertised ratings. I'll take some 1.8v DDR2 800 any day.