PC Crashing Question

[ew1075]

When overclocking, what can cause your PC to blue screen and reboot other than CPU temperatures?

My PC is crashing with tiny overclocks even with temps remaining around the 30C mark.

I tried overclocking from the Bios and if I so much as increase the CPU frequency 1 point, my PC will blue screen and crash during the Crysis benchmark. If I return to default, no problems with Crysis. I cannot make sense of that.

I overclocked an AMD Athlon II X4 630 to 3.1 GHz and ran Prime95 for an hour with no crash and temps never exceeded 35C. Yet when I ran Crysis benchmark I blue screened again.

I ran AMD Overdrive auto tune just for kicks and it had me way up around the 3.4 Ghz mark before I got suspicious and shut it off manually. I thought maybe it was doing something different so I ran the Crysis bench and crashed faster than a 3-year old returning home from Disney Land.

I have googled and the only answer I can find is you need to monitor your temperatures. Well I am running a Zalman cooler which came highly recommended at the time I bought it, and it is keeping the CPU temp really low but that doesn't seem to matter. Something else is screwing me over and I have no idea what.

Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon II X4 630
Asus M4A785-M
Corsair 550W PSU
Geforece 8800 GT
4 GB Corsair DDR2

Please help me with what is causing these crashes. I see others bragging about clocking these exact same processor models up to 3.2 Ghz and beyond but I can't even crack 2.8 without a crash ingame.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[jjjc_93]

You'll need to up the vcore a little.. That is another big factor in overclocking aswell as temps..

[Orac]

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...d.php?t=297148
read through that, it should point you at everything you need to know

[ew1075]

Hmm, that link didn't give me much. All it talks about is upping multipliers and frequencies. It mentions voltages but doesn't tell when, how, or how much to adjust.

I tried upping vcore through the BIOS and the best I can figure out the "CPU Over Voltage" option is the only way to do that. I upped it to the very first setting and failed to load windows. So I had to go back into BIOS and reset that to auto before I could even get windows loaded up.

I looked at some other voltage settings in the BIOS. I don't know what any of them mean and the manual is barely more than a repeat of what it already says in the BIOS. For example, one option in the BIOS is called "VDDNB Over Voltage". Here is the description for this option directly from the manual word for word: "Set the VDDNB voltage". Seriously? Wow that's extremely helpful. Thanks Asus I'll just go overclock this mother to 3.5 ghz now that I've read that description.

AHhh, I honestly don't see how people do this. This is my second attempt to overclock a processor and its going almost as bad as the first attempt did. There are just too many options to adjust with no description on what the option does, and too many variables involved. Its like finding a needle in a haystack and all you can do is go in and start experimenting with stuff. I am a little bit too cramped on cash to go overboard on the experimentation so I'm ending this before I end up frying a perfectly good processor.

Sorry about the rant, thanks for the help. Have a great evening.

[jjjc_93]

What? No dont just give up when something gets a little hard...I'll try and do some homework on your board and help you with those settings... Really have a little persistence towards something...

[davidhammock200]

RAM timings & voltages will do it, as will North Bridge heat & voltage problems.

[Orac]

if you want a list of stuff that can affect your OC
PSU
NB
SB
CPU
NB temp
SB temp
CPU temp
RAM temp
RAM voltage
RAM timings
PCIe speed
PCIe voltage
NB multi
HT link multi
HT link speed
HTR voltage
HTT voltage
HTR temp
HTT temp
number of stick of RAM
what slots the RAM are filling
ambiant air temps
humidity

there is a whole list of things that can affect your OC, yeh even the silicon inside the CPU.

so heres a bunch of questions for you, what is the CPU stock voltage, how are you ocing throught the multi or the HT (kinda trick question there), what are you using to monitor temps

[ShrimpBrime]

Originally Posted by ew1075

Hmm, that link didn't give me much. All it talks about is upping multipliers and frequencies. It mentions voltages but doesn't tell when, how, or how much to adjust.

I tried upping vcore through the BIOS and the best I can figure out the "CPU Over Voltage" option is the only way to do that. I upped it to the very first setting and failed to load windows. So I had to go back into BIOS and reset that to auto before I could even get windows loaded up.

I looked at some other voltage settings in the BIOS. I don't know what any of them mean and the manual is barely more than a repeat of what it already says in the BIOS. For example, one option in the BIOS is called "VDDNB Over Voltage". Here is the description for this option directly from the manual word for word: "Set the VDDNB voltage". Seriously? Wow that's extremely helpful. Thanks Asus I'll just go overclock this mother to 3.5 ghz now that I've read that description.

AHhh, I honestly don't see how people do this. This is my second attempt to overclock a processor and its going almost as bad as the first attempt did. There are just too many options to adjust with no description on what the option does, and too many variables involved. Its like finding a needle in a haystack and all you can do is go in and start experimenting with stuff. I am a little bit too cramped on cash to go overboard on the experimentation so I'm ending this before I end up frying a perfectly good processor.

Sorry about the rant, thanks for the help. Have a great evening.

The problem is no one knows what you are doing at all.

You need to boot windows with your unstable setting first. You know, the over clock that blue screens when you play Crysis.

Then you use cpu-z and HWMonitor to post screen shots of what you are running.

AMD Athlon II X4 630
Asus M4A785-M
Corsair 550W PSU
Geforece 8800 GT
4 GB Corsair DDR2

These specs are fine but there is info missing. Are you trying to run DDR2800? Is the 550w bare min for your system?

And when you over clock, a little at a time. You add mhz and voltage slowly. You can't take a FSB from 200 to 230 in one jump. In fact what is your FSB and chipset and Ram speeds?? We don't know.

[buttons]

You probably need to bump voltage in one or more of three areas:

RAM
Northbridge
CPU

When you increase your FSB it increases the clock speed of your ram, northbridge/Hyper transport and cpu. Im not saying crank your voltages. Personally I like to leave them low as possible

To get my overclock past 3.2ghz on my gigabyte board I had to bump my Northbridge to 1.3v on most other boards I could leave the voltage alone and just turn the multiplier down.

Make sure your ram is running in spec. a lot of motherboards run stock memory voltage lower then what they call for. Example: My corsair dominators were 2.1V i think. My motherboard stock voltage was 1.8

My crucial ballistics memory is rated for 1.8v while my gigabyte board only was set to 1.5v that can cause all sorts of blue screens. I couldnt even get windows setup to load until fixing this.

[ew1075]

Thanks for the suggestions everybody. Here are some answers to some of the questions.

550 bare minimum? Not sure. 500W is the minimum for my video card, other than that I don't really know.

My RAM is 2 sticks of 1 GB DDR2 800 and 2 sticks of DDR2 667, all Corsair.

I don't have any experience jacking with RAM timings and whatnot so at this point I don't have an answer for that.

Still haven't figured out how to increase voltage on my ASUS board. I read some complaints about another ASUS board which stated that the board was locked at 1.3 volts for vCore. The options in the bios were exactly the same ones I have.

Here are screenshots of HWMonitor, CPU-Z, and Core Temps after overclocking to just over 3 GHz. If I run the Crysis bench I will crash.

Edit: I have been performing upgrades for the last week or so. You might have noticed from the screens I have replaced the 8800GT. Probably not relevant in this case but just thought I would mention it before somebody else does.

[sku11fk]

Have you disabled all of the power saving features in the bios? I will try to help out here and note a few things to enable or disable that might work.


In the advanced section under CPU configuration try these.

Gart error repoting-disable
Microcode updation-enable
secure virtual machine- enable if you use VM-ware
Cool 'n Quiet- disable
C1E configuration - disable
Advanced clock calibration - disable

In advanced under jumperfree configuration

Change PCIE overclocking to manual - 100

CPU overvoltage manual - 1.38v Seems the max of the board

VDDNB-AUTO (for now)

HT link Frequency- lock to 2000mhz

HT voltage- 1.3v

HT link width- Auto

Memory clock - is half of whatever speed you ram is EG 533mhz = 1066mhz
Drop down to 333mhz while pushing your HT up

DRAM timmings - you will need to go to your Memory manufacturers
website to find settings


Thats all i can find for your bios. The only thing Im confused about is there seems to be no jumpers for using more cpu voltage. But there is an option under the HW monitor configuration for Anti Surgy Support {enabled} by default. Sounds like it may interfer with OCing but I would leave it untill somebody can shed some more light on what it does.

Dont give up! if all else fails buy a new motherboard. This one is not very OC friendly no wonder your having issues. As DavidHammock has quoted "allways buy the best"

[ew1075]

Thanks for the help. I tried those settings and got the same result. I adjusted everything like you said except RAM timings because I couldn't figure out what the settings were. There was about 11 or 12 different settings and I couldn't find anything on the manufacturer's website about them.

I guess it could be the motherboard. I don't know, I'm just confused because I read on the forums about people overclocking these things like its nothing. One place I read the AMD II 630 was almost a 100% guarantee to overclock above 3 Ghz. Doesn't seem so in my case.

Here is my next question. If I am going to have to put more money into my motherboard, would it make more sense to put the money in the processor instead? If I'm going to spend extra money I might as well RMA the processor and go all out with a Phenom II 965. At least that way I don't have to take a chance on getting another bad overclock.

[Mr.Scott]

The obvious things that pop out at me are:
1) lack of vcore to the CPU (crappy option cap in the bios)
2) mixed ram
Both of those will kill an overclock in a heartbeat.

[sku11fk]

Originally Posted by ew1075

Here is my next question. If I am going to have to put more money into my motherboard, would it make more sense to put the money in the processor instead? If I'm going to spend extra money I might as well RMA the processor and go all out with a Phenom II 965. At least that way I don't have to take a chance on getting another bad overclock.

as mister scott said. a mix of ram isnt ideal especially running 4 slots you are stressing the memory controller and are limited that way. And also limited by that board. Buying a new CPU with that setup will just yeild little fruit. When I first started overclocking I never wanted to spend money on decent equipment. But like you I kept having bad results. You r eally need to consider how hard your expecting to push the system. And work out what quality of componants you need to achieve it.
A motherboard with a 790x and sb 750 and 2x2gb of ram is whats needed here. then after you max out that athlon you can get a 965 that you know you can also max out without bouncing your head aginst your desk

Just a quick check on a uk shop. you can get an am2+ gigabyte board and 4gb of patriot 1066mhz ram for £10 more than a 965