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A few general naive questions (apologies)

miseryguts

miseryguts

miseryguts

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Joined
21 Sep 2011
Posts
119
Location
Workington, Cumbria
I currently have a i7 920 (3.45Ghz O/C) installed and it runs most things I throw at it fine, I do a lot of Video/Audio processing with various programs & no problems there, gaming performance is also for the most part OK at 1920x1200 (old HD 5870) but some newer games cause my system to suddenly reboot.. no noise, error messages, graphical anomalies etc just a restart.. after some investigation (I'm a complete novice with custom/performance rigs & inherited my current build) I'm reliably informed that it is 99.9% due to the CPU overheating which is why I've just ordered a Noctua NH-D14.
Would it be possible to reach 4/4.2Ghz with this coolers help.. Overclocking is as clear as mud to me (and yes i have read the guide here & many others) but I will persevere with it as I guess we all have to start somewhere.
What confuses me a little though, is what benefits all the different processor models give i5, i7 (and all their different model variants) when the vast majority of overclocked ones I have seen & read about end up being remarkably similar in the stable overclock speed even though the the prices of these different models is hugely varied.

Thanks for listening.
 
Would help if you posted your temperatures when the system is under load with prime95 or something similar.

I run a 920 D0 with a corsair H50 water unit at 4.15Ghz stable as. But when I try to push the system further and get bad reboots like that, i start to look at voltages and then of course the temperature rises.

What variant of 920 do you have C0 or D0 ?

Post some settings you have and temperatures.

What cooling are you using at the moment ???? Stock fan ????
 
Catanonia said:
Would help if you posted your temperatures when the system is under load with prime95 or something similar.

I run a 920 D0 with a corsair H50 water unit at 4.15Ghz stable as. But when I try to push the system further and get bad reboots like that, i start to look at voltages and then of course the temperature rises.

What variant of 920 do you have C0 or D0 ?

Post some settings you have and temperatures.

What cooling are you using at the moment ???? Stock fan ????
Click to expand...


Thanks for the reply, as far as the variant goes.. I don't know, inherited the system & the OC was already done, I've not touched anything (setting or hardware wise)
Core temp is reading between 38 - 45 without load
I'm afraid I am very new to all this so apologies if I am asking completely obvious questions.. what kind of settings?

Oh & yeah I'm almost certain the fan is stock
 
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What about your PSU? How old is it and what is its power rating?

I had similar problems in the past and it turned out to be my cheapish PSU...
 
You could also underclock the CPU to its normal settings and see if it makes any difference like whether the whole system gets any more stable.
 
IvanDobskey said:
What brand is the PSU? Unfortunately a large wattage number doesn't mean much. A cheap brand of PSU will not be able do deliver its stated rating.

If it's something naff like a Qtec then that could well be your problem.
Click to expand...

POWERCOOL PC-850AUBA-B

I know it's at the lower end of the price spectrum, but i do remember reading plenty of reviews when my friend originally installed it saying that at it's price point the performance/reliability & build quality were vey good indeed.. is there any way to check if indeed it is this PSU that is causing the random gaming reboots..?
 
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miseryguts said:
POWERCOOL PC-850AUBA-B

I know it's at the lower end of the price spectrum, but i do remember reading plenty of reviews when my friend originally installed it saying that at it's price point the performance/reliability & build quality were vey good indeed.. is there any way to check if indeed it is this PSU that is causing the random gaming reboots..?
Click to expand...

Not the best brand of PSU. You should never skimp on the PSU, it's the most important part of any PC as it powers everything. Could well be the culprit.
 
download cpu-z and post a screenshot. Also download real temp and intel burn test to stress your system and report the tempertures when running the tests if your system doesnt crash.
 
Hi there,

As has been mentioned above, the first things to do are post a screenshot of the main screen of CPU-Z (here is the download page for this useful app). Upload this image to an imagehost site like imageshack or photobucket.

Then once that has been done download realtemp or coretemp to check your CPU temperature in real-time. Then run a stress test on the CPU (a simple application is OCCT which includes the Prime95 CPU stress tester and a temperature reading), so you can see what maximum temperature it hits and whether it runs stably. If you see the temperature reading go over 80 I would immediately stop the test and consider resetting the CMOS on your motherboard (so the CPU settings go back to the standard ones.

Personally I think your issue is most likely to be the stock CPU cooler being not good enough to keep your overclocked CPU cool enough. However, your Powercool PSU is not a good quality one and it is being asked to power a very power-hungry CPU and graphics card - so perhaps when both of these are at full load and drawing a lot of power the PSU simply can't handle this and shuts down (there is a PSU test in OCCT, so it may be worth running this).
 
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