Bought this back in, what, 2010, 2011? Was my gaming rig running at 4.8 (!) Ghz on little more than a slight voltage increase, HT on, I even left Speed Step on so it wouldn't crack the fans every time it ramped up and down, it would coast along at whatever it default was, then game on and it would spool up. Gave it to the kid when I went to an 8700k a few years back, and its been running like a champ.....
Until it wasn't.
Since he spends a lot of time with that thing doing BeamNG which I think is pretty CPU intensive on an aged 4 core, I backed off the CPU to 4.3 when he said it was locking up from time to time, I assumed heat (kid is a teenager and likes his room the same temperature as a Tropical Jungle). So it starts to get locked into the dreaded Windows 10 recovery loop. I tinker with it, I replace the HSF paste, I pull out 2 of the 4 sticks of ram, and its still looping around. I put in a USB with Windows on it to go into recovery mode and boot from usb, wouldn't even do that. Bios was fine though, reported everything as present and ready for work. *sigh*. I throw the jumper and reset the bios. Now its working again, but only after I made "this one simple change..." to quote the meme: I disabled Intel Speedstep.
So now its got zero overclock on it, everything is stock, the only thing I changed was disabling Speed Step so it boots to 3.8ghz and stays there, the fan ramps up and down more dramatically (CPU) but temps are fine.
Boots up solid every time, fans spool up, running cool as a cucumber on the CPU and the GPU has a nice overclock on it and it also runs well within thermal limits. Ran Furmark and Furmark's 8 thread CPU load test.....no problems at all.
What I DID NOT try was re-applying the overclock to something like 4.2 and upping from stock voltage, right now he just wanted it working.
So.....is this my ancient CPU that ran at a ridiculous overclock finally getting tempermental or is this an ancient motherboard who's components may be fluctuating in their ability to provide adequate lower-voltage power (speedstep turned on)........or both. Now that it's working I'm not losing sleep over it, but I'd like to not have to spend an entire day changing settings up or down just to find out what the real culprit is. I'm going to assume that the CPU would probably do a 4.5 overclock again with speedstep turned off, but I might have to push more juice than before into it. Not sure it's worth it (he's running a 1080p screen and 60fps is fine for him), so probably the 3.8 stock with that 1080Ti will get the job done on mostly anything he throws at it, but that computer dork inside of me really wants to know whats up, and if I can get him a stable 4.5 or so again.
I had to dust off the internet to even remember how to overclock that MB/Chip last night.....I set it to 4.0 and it just locked repeatedly, so I knew I had to jack up the voltage but couldn't remember what was safe...will have to look that up today. Worst case I lock it again, reset the bios, get it back to stock at 3.8 and just say "this is as good as grampa will run now, son.....be gentle with him, he hasn't got much time left.."...
Until it wasn't.
Since he spends a lot of time with that thing doing BeamNG which I think is pretty CPU intensive on an aged 4 core, I backed off the CPU to 4.3 when he said it was locking up from time to time, I assumed heat (kid is a teenager and likes his room the same temperature as a Tropical Jungle). So it starts to get locked into the dreaded Windows 10 recovery loop. I tinker with it, I replace the HSF paste, I pull out 2 of the 4 sticks of ram, and its still looping around. I put in a USB with Windows on it to go into recovery mode and boot from usb, wouldn't even do that. Bios was fine though, reported everything as present and ready for work. *sigh*. I throw the jumper and reset the bios. Now its working again, but only after I made "this one simple change..." to quote the meme: I disabled Intel Speedstep.
So now its got zero overclock on it, everything is stock, the only thing I changed was disabling Speed Step so it boots to 3.8ghz and stays there, the fan ramps up and down more dramatically (CPU) but temps are fine.
Boots up solid every time, fans spool up, running cool as a cucumber on the CPU and the GPU has a nice overclock on it and it also runs well within thermal limits. Ran Furmark and Furmark's 8 thread CPU load test.....no problems at all.
What I DID NOT try was re-applying the overclock to something like 4.2 and upping from stock voltage, right now he just wanted it working.
So.....is this my ancient CPU that ran at a ridiculous overclock finally getting tempermental or is this an ancient motherboard who's components may be fluctuating in their ability to provide adequate lower-voltage power (speedstep turned on)........or both. Now that it's working I'm not losing sleep over it, but I'd like to not have to spend an entire day changing settings up or down just to find out what the real culprit is. I'm going to assume that the CPU would probably do a 4.5 overclock again with speedstep turned off, but I might have to push more juice than before into it. Not sure it's worth it (he's running a 1080p screen and 60fps is fine for him), so probably the 3.8 stock with that 1080Ti will get the job done on mostly anything he throws at it, but that computer dork inside of me really wants to know whats up, and if I can get him a stable 4.5 or so again.
I had to dust off the internet to even remember how to overclock that MB/Chip last night.....I set it to 4.0 and it just locked repeatedly, so I knew I had to jack up the voltage but couldn't remember what was safe...will have to look that up today. Worst case I lock it again, reset the bios, get it back to stock at 3.8 and just say "this is as good as grampa will run now, son.....be gentle with him, he hasn't got much time left.."...