Can Overclocking Damage Components?

lee87 · 3 Feb 2006 at 09:59

I got some new components for my pc on tuesday
Asrock 939 Dual Motherboard
1GB Corsair Value Ram
Athlon X2 3800+

I had my cpu clocked at 2.5ghz and it was stable, yesterday I tried to clock it to 2.6ghz and it would keep freezing at the bios. I left it, later that day I came back and put the pc on but it would keep getting boot errors. The bios was set back to it's default settings. I then found out that my hard drive had died.

I have had the hard drive for 1 1/2 years with no problems until now. It was a IDE 80GB Maxtor.

I didn't think overclocking could break anything except the RAM or cpu.
Could overclocking cause my hard drive to break?

Thanks

badbob · 3 Feb 2006 at 10:40

Maxtor

That's all you need to say. Maxtor are rubbish. Buy a quality drive.
Overclocking won't damage your HD's (although the faster PCI bus will get errors when pushed too high)

The $6m Dan · 3 Feb 2006 at 11:04

Most modern motherboards have pci locks so that they don't run faster than designed, unlike days of yore.

It's more than likely just a co-incidence, and bad luck.

ns400r · 3 Feb 2006 at 11:59

What errors are you seeing ?
Could it just be a corrupt Windows installation?

cavemanoc · 3 Feb 2006 at 12:30

Yep - listen to ns400r - I always find the first signs I've pushed too far is I start getting corruptions on the HDD - eventually something important break and it's time to re-install windows (again :rolleyes:

) - You sure it's dead, and not just corrupted? Bung your windows CD in and use the system recovery feature - use the Fixboot and fixmbr commands - might help!

What actual symptoms are you getting?

Edit: While OC'ing shouldn't affect your hdd (provided the PCI is locked - it's not SATA is it?) bear in mind that it puts enormous strain on you PSU - if you are underpowered, you can get dramatic fluctuations on your rails (my old cheapo PSU used to look like the trace from a heart monitor!) - those fluctuations will happily eat your HDD - they're very sensitive, especially to undervolting!

lee87 · 3 Feb 2006 at 14:21

ns400r said:
What errors are you seeing ?
Could it just be a corrupt Windows installation?

It's definitely broke

it's saying 'reboot and please select proper boot device or insert boot media into selected boot device and press a key to continue'. It says this straight after the bios screen. I tried to install windows but it does the same even if the dvd drive is the first boot device. If I unplug the hard drive it will load up the cd.

I tried an old 20gb HDD and it worked fine.

badbob said:
That's all you need to say. Maxtor are rubbish. Buy a quality drive.

I've used maxtor hard drives in 3 pc's that i've built and this is the first problem i've had with them.

I kept the pci frequency at the default speed when overclocking so that wouldn't have caused it.
Must have just been a coincidence that it broke straight after the overclock.
Just wanted to know if the overclock could cause it to break as I might have not overclocked again.

cavemanoc · 3 Feb 2006 at 16:16

Have you tried booting up with the 20Gb as primary and the 'broken' as secondary. If you can boot up like that you can use diagnostic tools to find out what's wrong.

Larok · 3 Feb 2006 at 18:37

Try disabling the raid devices in the bios. The mobo might be looking for a raid config and missing the sata drive.

mp260767 · 3 Feb 2006 at 23:53

are you certain the 1st boot device is the right drive.

with that mobo if u switch it off/on a couple of times it resets the bois to all defaults.

JRS · 4 Feb 2006 at 00:01

badbob said:
That's all you need to say. Maxtor are rubbish. Buy a quality drive.

What, like the 4 year old Maxtor I have in this machine as it's main drive that has never once given me a problem? In the time I've had this drive, a mate of mine has gone through 3 WDs and is now on his second Seagate.

What would you consider as a "quality drive"?

p4radox · 4 Feb 2006 at 00:21

cavemanoc said:
use the Fixboot and fixmbr commands - might help!

Just out of interest, what are they? Could you tell me how to use them please?
Thanks

col20 · 4 Feb 2006 at 01:23

You have to boot up first using a floppy or cd into dos to use those commands dont u i thought that he wasnt able to boot past the bios screen or didnt i read it right?

lee87 · 4 Feb 2006 at 09:56

mp260767 said:
are you certain the 1st boot device is the right drive.

with that mobo if u switch it off/on a couple of times it resets the bois to all defaults.

Yes, I tried with the cd and floppy drive as the first boot devices and it still didn't work.

If I have the hard drive plugged in, I can't boot from any other drive (cd, floppy or other hard drive). It will come up with the same message.
I tried disabling raid and didn't make a difference.
I tried the hard drive in another pc and it doesn't work in that either.

Thanks for all the help anyway. I'm currently using a old 20GB hard drive for my gaming machine.

ns400r · 4 Feb 2006 at 10:03

ns400r said:
What errors are you seeing ?
Could it just be a corrupt Windows installation?

That's better, some details on your errors.

It's fubared.

Cyber-Mav · 4 Feb 2006 at 11:33

if you overclocked your ram when overclocking your cpu and tried to get into windows to do some cpu testing then all i can say is that your a muppet

if the ram is producing errors then you do risk corrupted data on the hard dirve. everytime i overclock my cpu even by 1mhz the first thing i do is have the goldmemory cd in the drive and boost straight off that to test the ram for about 2 hours. then i enter into windows to run snm for the cpu testing stage.

lee87 · 4 Feb 2006 at 11:48

When I had the cpu clocked at 2.5ghz, the ram was also overclocked. I had ran a cpu test and memtest and this didn't show any errors. I had it set like this for 2 days.
When I tried to overclock to 2.6ghz, I put the ram on a divider. The pc would crash at the bios, so I turned the pc off and left it for 6 hours. Thats when the errors started happening and I didn't get a chance to do any testing.

Cyber-Mav · 4 Feb 2006 at 12:01

hmm, something else must have gone wrong then, what voltage were you running? the 3800 stock is 2ghz each core so you have increased by 500mhz overstock. i would have thought that your getting close to your limit and the next jumps your to make must be smaller than 100mhz, around 50mhz a time would be more reasonable.

lee87 · 4 Feb 2006 at 12:09

The voltage was only at 1.4V. Thats the most my mobo will go to.
Didn't change the ram voltage.
I have checked the stepping and some people have been getting between 2.6ghz-2.8ghz with it.

I think it could just be a coincidence that it broke after the overclock.