Is my i3 deteriorating?

[KiiYzOo]

I have had my i3 540 overclocked to 4ghz since christmas and I got starcraft 2 and I put everything on ultra settings and I was getting smooth framerates at every part in the game but one day last weekend my game started to lag whenever i'm in places like the ship and I was wondering what was wrong as it was working fine before.
is there any way to test if my cpu is deteriorating?

 

[Muel]

If it starts crashing at a stable overclock, then it's deteriorating.

Sounds like you just need to clear out Windows tbh.

 

[3DSAM]

What voltages are you using? And what are the temps when playing?

 

[KiiYzOo]

yeah it has been crashing sometimes while watching videos on youtube or watching movies.
I've tryed testing it with prime before for about an hour and it was fine so I quit prime and after like ten minutes of watching videos on youtube it crashed
The thing is I only got it in November I think.
what do you mean about clearing out windows?

 

[KiiYzOo]

What voltages are you using? And what are the temps when playing?

temps are like 40-60 degrees and I don't really know what the voltages are as my motherboard has the most retarded bios ever. i did increase a voltage to do with my cpu by about 0.15v i think.

 

[SouthEastBlue]

Clearing out Windows as in defragmentation of your drives and running software like ccleaner to remove temp files and fix registry errors.

This is a big reason the average persons PC gets slow.

You may wana double check CPU vcore with CPU-Z just to make sure your not frying your chip.

 

[EniGmA1981]

Could be GPU overheating too - I had BSOD+reboot when I tried OCing my 4770 (still on stock cooler, it wasn't happy with that...)

Stating the obvious but check the GPU heatsink for dust, check the fan is working a-ok etc...

Start with the simple solutions then worry about the worst case scenario at a later date

 

[KiiYzOo]

cpu-z says that i'm on 1.32v.
its not my gpu as it's temps are very good considering the high overclock I have.

 

[Purgatory]

The crashing in Youtube is probably Flash video acceleration causing you the problem, right click the video and go into flash settings and try with video acceleration off. Also try updating your video card drivers. The Voltage you are using is safe for that CPU and it's probably just bedded in that CPU and may require you to overclock it again from scratch to get a new stable overclock. The CPU VID Voltage Range is 0.6500V-1.4000V.

So anything upto 1.4v vcore in the BIOS is safe for that CPU for 24/7 use.


http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=46473


The slow downs in the game are probably due to your hard drive being defragmented or your operating system needs a good clean out.

 

[JonJ678]

Was it stable originally? If not, there's no reason to expect it to be stable now.

 

[KiiYzOo]

Yeah it was stable before. I had it on a higher overclock before and it was stable I don't know why it's not now

 

[opethdisciple]

An hour of prim is not enough.

Before I upgraded my bios I wa stable for 8 hours at 1.3625v then I upgraded bios, and ran prime,

For 1 hour i was stable..... at 1.30hr it gave me an error!

I up'd the volts a tad and it ran prime for 8 hours.......

Hasnt crashed once in the 5 months its been overclocked.

Run prime for at least 5-8 hours....

No joke either...

Also the volts I'v stated above ar for my chip and probably do not apply to yours...

 

[KiiYzOo]

it's just hard to overclock with my bios as the UI is very different to what i've seen in tutorials on youtube and it's much harder to find things.
I will try upping my voltages and see if that works as you kinda said.
with prime it's just that it's hard to find the time to run it for like 5 hours as i'm constantly on my computer.