what killed my Overclock?

[100Core]

Hi all,

My rig is below, and I suddenly have been experiencing complete instability at higher speeds. Im just curious if its possible that I blew something on my mobo or something....

Also, is it possible to DECREASE stability by raising voltages? or is it always the opposite

I have the voltages higher then they have ever been, and I cant get above 3.5 with stability. A few months ago (even during the warm summer), I was hitting 4.1 with no problems at all! So what the heck changed?

Is there a key bios setting that is killing it? Im pretty positive all my settings are identical to what they were, but I did restore to defaults and then restore them by memory several times so I may be forgetting something...

Sorry if this is too vague... But any ideas?

 

[Ben90]

Yes it is possible to decrease stability by raising voltage too far... i cant really explain it all that well.

My guess is it sounds like electromigration...What voltage were u using to hit 4.1ghz?

If it gets any worse i would recommend putting it back to stock clocks, and put the voltage as low as it can go (might not go much lower anymore); then start looking at buying a new processor

 

[alyarb]

same thing happened with my 9550. it could do 4.15 but now it can only do 3.71. meh.

 

[lopri]

You always want to give the least voltages for any given frequency. What is the max overclock you could get without raising voltages? Also keep in mind that today's boards tend to give more juice automatically when they detect user overclock. So if something is left 'auto', it could be overvolted or undervolted. It can be a tedious procedure to find the sweet spot.

4.1 GHz is a very high OC for a Yorkfield.. I think it's possible the board degrades over time at such a high FSB. Lower the multiplier to x8 and try something like 450 FSB.. and see how it goes from there.

 

[100Core]

damn... that sucks. People dont talk about this phenomenon much... this is the first ive heard of it anyway! I had it running at 4.1 for only about 6 months and already degradation? I am gonna play around with it quite a bit more just to make sure but something definitely changed substantially

 

[manimal]

Everytime I thought a chip was going off it ended up being the board. My current E8400 started resetting itself and forced me to lower to 3.6 at 1.35 volts to get stable again. After pulling it and trying it in another board turned out it was the board. I was actually able to lower voltage to get the same 4.0

I always think on overclocked quads the NB heat and the extra wear on the VRMs is what causes most peoples issues...