overclock no longer stable after 6 months.

S

Soggy

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 12, 2007
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I built my computer 6 months ago and overclocked it right away and I've never had a single problem with instability till 2 nights ago when I got an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSoD while playing Borderlands. I thought it was a fluke but I got the same BSoD again while playing the game so I started running some tests.

also before running the tests I ran the dump file through debugger and it gave me
"Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!KiProcessTimerDpcTable+4d )"

test1) PC Check returns all good.

test2) Ran HeavyLoad and got the same BSoD within 5 minuets.

test3) Reset BIOS to defaults and didn't get any problems with HeavyLoad or Boarderlands

test4) Loaded a fresh copy of windows 7 on a different hard drive and ran HeavyLoad. It didn't BSoD as fast but I did get at least one BSoD of a different type and a crash of some sort while my back was turned.

test5) Bumped the voltage up a notch from 1.225 to 1.230 and ran HeavyLoad in the original OS and didn't get a single problem.

I recently dusted out the computer and my temps never go above 65C.

One other thing I'm not sure if is worth mentioning is that I attempted to overclock my video card for the first time the day before the problems started. The card was fine with the overclock but then reset itself at some point. I cleaned out all the nvidia drives and reloaded fresh copies.

question 1) Is it normal for an overclock to breakdown like this after a while or should I be concerned?

question 2) Where do I go with the testing next? My plan at the moment is to run a full memory test and then more stability testing in the Fresh OS but I don't have much experience with sniffing out low level problems like this.

P.S. I don't have all the details of my overclock at the moment and it's getting late so I'll post those tomarrow.
 
I had the same thing happen to me last night in sc2. I think my ocz memory is going bad.
 
Heh don't worry. One small voltage bump is not what I would an OC "breaking down". TBH, sounds like your testing was not extensive enough back 6 months ago (when you first started). It's alright if you were in a hurry then, but OCs are not rock-solid, and it's not a bad idea to re-evaluate the settings now and then.

Two, if you are not crashing at all at stock (play long, full gaming sessions) then it's obviously not a hardware problem.
 
I thought my CPU was starting to fail, but it ended up being bad ram that wouldn't give a beep code.
 
Thigs can, and do, change over time. Unfortunately it can be any one of a dozen components that can be causing the change and you usually do not find the problem until the item fails completely.
 
all I've had time for sense the origional post is playing boarderlands for about an hour which resulted in a BSoD. that was with the origionl overclock but the voltage bumped up a bit. Things only break on me when I have no time for fixing them.
 
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