What's causing my overclocked PhenomII system to restart?

[poohbear]

Hey all, specs are in my sig. I thought that my solid overclock of 1 year is starting to get flaky cause my comp has recently started restarting randomly & im getting the BSOD.

1.) At first i thought it was software related cause after i installed my motorolla android software it started happening. I uninstalled all the software but it continued happening the following days.

2.) Then i realized it might be because i moved apartments and the newer one is warmer (has special floor heating and the case is on floor, central heating so i have no control over it). So, to find the culprit, I retested the CPU and ram w/ P95, but it was fine. Did memtest and the ram was fine (its not even overclocked). However, when i used OCCT's CPU/RAM/NB test it restarted, so i figured it must be the NB not being able to handle the warmer environment (its got the passive stock heatsink). It's ridiculously hot to the touch, i.e. it burns my skin off, so i took off the NB voltage and put it back to stock, and reduced my NB overclock from 2400mhz to stock 2000mhz. but still, a day later it restarted.

3.) this new apartment also seems to collect dust a whole lot faster, although i checked for dust bunnies and there are none, the fans have a thin coat of dust, so will get some compressed air and see if that helps. Highly doubt it though.

4.) i noticed the computer restarted when i just moved the case a little bit. So, this might mean its a loose cable, I checked all cables and they appear to be secure (didnt disconnect and reconnect everything, just checked they were plugged in proper). Or could it be possibly a faulty psu cable?(recal my friends psu would restarted the sys if touched ever so slightly)

Given the above points, what do u think the culprit might be? thanks in advance for any opinions, its a bit of a mystery but still trying to isolate components and figure it out.

 

[Dice144]

The Northbridge on AMD PII is inside the chip. I am not sure where you are feeling. Play with the NB voltages till you find the sweet spot again. What kinda temps are you getting on the NB?

 

[magomago]

yup i'd look at the psu.

my psu was slowly failing. if i ever touched my pc lightly it would restart. it would also seem to restart at pc intensive moments. i finally realized a year later that tapping the psu directly yet lightly would cause an insta restart. it was one of those cheap 'ultra' psus i got for like 10AR.

switched to an antec and never had an issue.

for another friend the culprit turned out to be (i had to diagnose it myself so i'm not going off his word) a loose modular connection to his motherboard from the psu-side. fixing that resolved his issue.

 

[Zap]

First thing to do is to remove all overclocks from your CPU, RAM and GPU. You already mentioned putting the Northbridge back to stock speeds. Try stock speeds on EVEYTHING at the same time.

With some systems (note "systems" and not "CPUs") an overclock will degrade over time, or sometimes with a change in environment. You need to start from scratch and make sure everything is stable at stock. If it is not, then you need to find the hardware culprit. If it is, then you need to start small and go up from there, just like you did when you first overclocked it.

 

[Markfw]

I know Corsair is good, but it is something to check out. That is one thing I have seen in the past, since the voltage at e new place was inconsistent or low, and then undoing the OC, or replacing the PSU fixed the problem.

 

[frostedflakes]

CPUs degrade a bit with time (i.e. after a few years, you might require more voltage to remain stable at a certain clock than before). So your OC losing stability might not have anything to do with moving apartments or whatever and just be a coincidence.

How long did you let Prime95 run for? I've had situations where it will be stable for a couple hours, but I'll get very occasional reboots (one every couple days or week, for example). Quick Prime95 runs will say the system is stable, but if I let it run for 24 hours it would catch this instability. So maybe try doing a very long (at least 12 hour, preferably 24) P95 run and see if it can pass that.

As mentioned I suspect CPU overclock has degraded a bit. Just bumping up the voltage a tick should hopefully make it stable again.

 

[poohbear]

thanks for all the replies folks.

It turns out it wasnt a problem w/ the overclock, it was a problem w/ the front USB connector of my case which seems to have degraded over time. When i connected anything to it (android phone, usb stick, camera etc) it would sometimes restart, or even if anything fiddled with it (i.e. moving the case a little bit).

My PSU is a premium Corsair PSU and solid as they come, so was hesitant to say it was the culprit (heck we buy expensive brand names w/ top of the line components for a reason!!). The NB temps might've been a contributing problem, in new apartment the NB heatsink is alot hotter than old one, so im keeping them at stock voltages for now to be safe and it has brought the temps down a bit. just to be safe im gonna replace the stock Gigabyte NB heatsink w/ one of those thermalright ones, any component that burns to the touch is just bad news.

on a side note, lowering the NB overclock from 2400mhz to its default 2000 has'nt changed performance any, but that could be because i bought an SSD since the NB overclock and it by far overshadows any tangible gain from that. I recall things opened faster and snappier when i overclocked the NB, but those effects have probably been negated w/ the instantaneous speeds of the SSD.

 

[NumericalMethods]

That sounds like a grounding issue with the ports. I knew that the Antec 900 / 1200s were struck down with that problem. It seems like you may be experiencing the same.

You might be able to replace the front panel connectors or Antec might send you new ones if you ask nicely

 

[poohbear]

That sounds like a grounding issue with the ports. I knew that the Antec 900 / 1200s were struck down with that problem. It seems like you may be experiencing the same.

You might be able to replace the front panel connectors or Antec might send you new ones if you ask nicely

thanks NM, i'll look into that. cheers