What's the WEIRDEST anomaly you've ever witnessed

[thetxstang]

About two weeks ago, I decided to help a friend OC his system. It's an admittedly sucky AMD Socket A 2400+ Sempron with a 1.67GHz default speed, but I suppose that's beside the point. At any rate, I got the CPU up to 2.0GHz and everything seemed to run just great.

I played around with the system at 2.0GHz for a few hours and everything was fine. I ended up running memtest86 for a few hours and everything worked great. I ran Prime95 for 22 hours without any incident.

A couple of days later, my friend commented that while browsing the Web using Firefox (latest version), at random times the computer would suddenly restart on its own. Once the computer restarted, he could go about surfing the Web again for a few hours until the same sudden restart condition would rear its ugly head. Otherwise, everything about the PC worked fine.

Long story short, I didn't believe him. I asked him to lend me his PC so I could test it for myself. Lo and behold, he's right! After the PC has been on a few hours, and I'm surfing away on the Web, the thing will just suddenly blank out and restart itself. It's done it four times now. I ran Prime95 for 34 hours straight after the most recent restart, and it runs without incident. WTF?!

 

[Ricemarine]

Could be possible your power supply can't handle the load?

 

[GodLovesPunk]

I had that problem with my current system (specs in the sig). I'd be surfing the web and my computer would blue screen and restart instantly. This ONLY happened while surfing the internet. Just had to keep increasing the voltage to the CPU until the problem stopped. Haven't had the problem since I found the right voltage for my OC.

 

[thetxstang]

Originally posted by: GodLovesPunk
I had that problem with my current system (specs in the sig). I'd be surfing the web and my computer would blue screen and restart instantly. This ONLY happened while surfing the internet. Just had to keep increasing the voltage to the CPU until the problem stopped. Haven't had the problem since I found the right voltage for my OC.

Interesting that this happened to you as well. Maybe the TRUE indicator of system stability isn't Prime95 or memtest86 anymore, but rather Interweb surfing!

 

[SunSamurai]

I think possibly system stability utilities are very primitive thus far.

 

[F1shF4t]

well i had my system dual priming for like 8 hours at 1.325v then suddenly it froze, so stability is not really garentied when the sys pased prime.

weirdest thing i had with my system is when u overclock and it fails sometimes the loading bios boot logo the dfi one comes out all garbadged, once i entered bios like that and it was just random black lines on a blue screen, looked really weird. Turn the thing of and back on and its fine. Same thing happened when i was overclocking the asus a8v too much at 280HTT the boot screen is all colourful and the writing is all over the place.

 

[JMWarren]

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
well i had my system dual priming for like 8 hours at 1.325v then suddenly it froze, so stability is not really garentied when the sys pased prime.

weirdest thing i had with my system is when u overclock and it fails sometimes the loading bios boot logo the dfi one comes out all garbadged, once i entered bios like that and it was just random black lines on a blue screen, looked really weird. Turn the thing of and back on and its fine. Same thing happened when i was overclocking the asus a8v too much at 280HTT the boot screen is all colourful and the writing is all over the place.

Same think happend to me a couple of times with my DFI. It's a pain to get it set up right but once you do it's a damn stable board.

 

[Elfear]

Does your buddy's board have good pci locks on it? I had the exact same thing happen to me on a Neo4 Platinum I used to have. Primed for hours on end and than while surfing the net or moving through files it would randomly restart. Traced it down to pci locks that didn't work quite right. Prime doesn't pick up on it because it doesn't access your hdd except for the intial startup.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

In addition to what has already been suggested, you did do the obvious and uncheck auto-restart under start-up&recovery and check the logs right?

 

[furballi]

Other variables are temperature and the aging of PC components, especially when overclocking a CPU. The best strategy is to pass Prime/Memtest, then back-off the core speed by at least 50MHz. I normally scale back between 70 and 100MHz.

 

[Maximilian]

Well with my old socket 754 athlon 64 clawhammer, i cranked the FSB all the way up to 280 mhz. After that, whenever i moved a key around in the BIOS it would produce love heart symbols on the screen amongst other weird symbols. That was pretty weird.

 

[letdown427]

Originally posted by: Soviet
Well with my old socket 754 athlon 64 clawhammer, i cranked the FSB all the way up to 280 mhz. After that, whenever i moved a key around in the BIOS it would produce love heart symbols on the screen amongst other weird symbols. That was pretty weird.

calling shens without some kind of proof.

Oh, and on-topic, I had my 4400+ OC'd a bit, was surfing the web, and I bore witness to a JLGatsby thread. Tried to stock clock it, but it was still there. Weird anomaly.

 

[JMWarren]

Originally posted by: letdown427

Originally posted by: Soviet
Well with my old socket 754 athlon 64 clawhammer, i cranked the FSB all the way up to 280 mhz. After that, whenever i moved a key around in the BIOS it would produce love heart symbols on the screen amongst other weird symbols. That was pretty weird.

calling shens without some kind of proof.

My DFI board will do the same thing. It's not uncommon.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: JMWarren

Originally posted by: letdown427

Originally posted by: Soviet
Well with my old socket 754 athlon 64 clawhammer, i cranked the FSB all the way up to 280 mhz. After that, whenever i moved a key around in the BIOS it would produce love heart symbols on the screen amongst other weird symbols. That was pretty weird.

calling shens without some kind of proof.

My DFI board will do the same thing. It's not uncommon.

Yea, and this was a .13 3200+ clawhammer running at 2.8ghz for a few seconds, no dividers or anything that socket 939 has. That cpu was sold on ebay a couple of weeks ago. Think i still have the board, MSI-6751? maybe, it was mATX with the K8T800.

 

[DaNorthface]

i've seen it happen too.. prime and memtest does not mean it's stable. Also, just because your clock rate is high and your benchmarks are high, it doesn't make a good system. I usually lower my clock rate from my max stable freq. Sure i get lower bench scores but the computer just seems more responsive, which is much more important.

 

[Vegitto]

Pah, this is nothing. I heard of someone OCing a 3200 Venice and unlocking it in the process!
Too bad he sold it .

 

[stevty2889]

What you are describing sounds like the reason I disabled the Nvidia network controller on my DFI board..even at stock speeds I was getting reboots when I would browse the internet. Disabled the Nvidia, and using the PNY network controller..and no more issues..

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: thetxstang
About two weeks ago, I decided to help a friend OC his system. It's an admittedly sucky AMD Socket A 2400+ Sempron with a 1.67GHz default speed, but I suppose that's beside the point. At any rate, I got the CPU up to 2.0GHz and everything seemed to run just great.

I played around with the system at 2.0GHz for a few hours and everything was fine. I ended up running memtest86 for a few hours and everything worked great. I ran Prime95 for 22 hours without any incident.

A couple of days later, my friend commented that while browsing the Web using Firefox (latest version), at random times the computer would suddenly restart on its own. Once the computer restarted, he could go about surfing the Web again for a few hours until the same sudden restart condition would rear its ugly head. Otherwise, everything about the PC worked fine.

Long story short, I didn't believe him. I asked him to lend me his PC so I could test it for myself. Lo and behold, he's right! After the PC has been on a few hours, and I'm surfing away on the Web, the thing will just suddenly blank out and restart itself. It's done it four times now. I ran Prime95 for 34 hours straight after the most recent restart, and it runs without incident. WTF?!

Sounds like either the power supply can't handle the load, or the cpu is overheating. (or northbridge, or memory)

Wierdest thing I ever experience with overclocking was the bilinear filtering cutting out on me while running 3dmark. I was only overclocking the cpu's fsb and memory, not the graphics card, but for whatever reason the filtering cut out and I was left with point sampled textures in 3dmark. It certainly was interesting looking.

 

[CCityInstaller]

I've had the random restart-while-browsing-the-internet-after-being-prime-stable-for-24hours-problem . Seriously though I have experienced the same problem. In my case, it was related to the fact that my Asus MB doesn't like to run ram @ 1T with any high HTT. Thankfully the board is faster at 2T then most at 1T.

 

[batmang]

it either needs more juice, is getting too hot, or it just sucks at oc'ing. not really much to figure out. play with timings and settings, make sure its not getting too hot and make sure it has enough power.

 

[Mogadon]

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
well i had my system dual priming for like 8 hours at 1.325v then suddenly it froze, so stability is not really garentied when the sys pased prime.

weirdest thing i had with my system is when u overclock and it fails sometimes the loading bios boot logo the dfi one comes out all garbadged, once i entered bios like that and it was just random black lines on a blue screen, looked really weird. Turn the thing of and back on and its fine. Same thing happened when i was overclocking the asus a8v too much at 280HTT the boot screen is all colourful and the writing is all over the place.

Very few people on this board regard priming for 8 hours as an indication of stability. Generally the accepted norm is 24 hours. And yes, your system may still be unstable after this test it's just not very likely and if it is unstable is, in my experience, more likely to be a software issue.

 

[furballi]

Prime95 is a tool, not a guarantee formula for success. I only test for 2 hours using Prime95. Once I discover the point of failure, I backed-off the CPU core speed between 50 and 100MHz, depending on how much I overclock.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: letdown427

Originally posted by: Soviet
Well with my old socket 754 athlon 64 clawhammer, i cranked the FSB all the way up to 280 mhz. After that, whenever i moved a key around in the BIOS it would produce love heart symbols on the screen amongst other weird symbols. That was pretty weird.

calling shens without some kind of proof.

Oh, and on-topic, I had my 4400+ OC'd a bit, was surfing the web, and I bore witness to a JLGatsby thread. Tried to stock clock it, but it was still there. Weird anomaly.

I have seen the same thing, he doesn't need proof!

 

[sumyungai]

I experienced something similar. I could dual prime 7 days non-stop with no incident at 1.42 vcore, but certain programs will act weird. For instance, upon boot my bitcomet doesn't auto-minimize and I would have to right click, maximize, then restore to bring bitcomet to a usable state. But if I raised vcore to 1.46, things go back to normal. This is when I realized that Prime 95 stability does not guarantee system stability.

 

[thetxstang]

Thank you all for your comments. I've learned beyond a shadow of a doubt thus far that Prime95 is NOT the end-all be-all when it comes to stability testing.

Furthermore, there's been a couple of anomalies I've read within this thread that seem far more "weird" than my Firefox issue. Oh, and I appreciated reading about those who have experienced the same issues when Web browsing after having passed 24+ hours of Priming. I thought perhaps I might be alone with this issue...until now.

C'mon now, there are many OC'ers here. Anyone else wish to contribute?