CPU dying?

[doiks14]

I had my E6420 since 8800GTX was released (don't remember when that was)
I've had my E6420 sitting at 3.2GHz ever since then..
Then yesterday, it just starting randomly crashing... I put the clocks of the CPU back to stock and I've never had a crash since then... I can live with that but I will really miss the extra Hz

Anyone got any experience about this?

 

[doiks14]

Your case and fans probably just need a good cleaning

I do that regularly every month or so... and the temps were 32 idle and low 4ish after playing games for hours...

 

[doiks14]

Cheers !! I'll give overclocking a try tonight... see If I can get 3.2GHz stable at a higher voltage.. fingers crossed

 

[doiks14]

I've had it at 1.375v.
I'm not too sure about ambient temp, but I'd say at least 25... really warm with the 9800GX2 in my PC..

 

[doiks14]

I had it running at 400x8.. wouldn't consider that high at all...

its probably the 9800GX2. Sounds stereotypical, but they were such ****e cards, that id point to them first.

thats one of the things I'm looking into atm... cause Its such a coinsidence.. I had the latest driver and I found the support for multi screen with the latest ones for the 9800GX2 are totally messed up... everytime my computer went on from sleep.. It goes back to single display mode..
So I went back to older drivers (181.20), thats only when I started getting random crashes... never had it before driver down-grade
I'll probably update the drivers a more up-to-date driver (not latest) and see how that goes.

 

[doiks14]

Id knock it back to stock, reinstall windows, then put the overclock back and see if it's still in trouble.

I wouldn't expect it to degrade at 1.375V, but motherboards do seem to have a somewhat unpredictable lifespan

Thats probably where I should start off with.. a freshly installed OS.. could do it tommorow.. my gf's off to scotland and its also my day off, so got the whole day to do it

Will start backing up my stuff tonight...

 

[doiks14]

well, I reverted back to XP from Vista and installed latest Nvidia drivers... now the random crashes are completely gone and got the CPU back at 3.2GHz at the same voltage as before.

That was a really weird problem.
Only other problem I have now is with Nvidia driver
I can't enable SLI.. and I can't do multi-display as well...

 

[doiks14]

used driver sweeper and did a reinstall of older Nvidia drivers.. now It works fine.. just wish there was a way of enabling SLI whilst in dual display mode..

Oh well, at least Its a lot easier to live with now.