Is my system stable?

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3 Feb 2008
Posts
136
I built my new rig about 6 months ago and other than giving it an initial thrashing up to 4GHz OC on air when new I run everything at stock settings. I use Flight Simulator X a lot and after an hour or two flying the system locks solid. Everything else is fine - spreadsheets, word processors, windows media player, itunes etc. I tried re-installing all of the drivers but that made no difference. So I did a complete re-format and reinstall of XP taking it all the way back to SP3. Tried FSX which ran for a few hours then locked solid.

Wondering if the problem was hardware I ran the memory for 12hrs on Memtest86+ with no problems. But when I run prime95 on both cores it will fall over after four or five hours. I don't like this at all - but am I being too fussy or do I have a problem? And if there is a problem any ideas on how to fix it? (Temps - idles at 51C but maxes out at 63/64C according to Asus probe)
Specs:
Asus P5E3
E8400
8800 GTS 512
OCZ 2GB DDR3 PC3-10666c9 Gold
Tuniq Tower 120
 
Your idle and load temps are waaaay too high for running at stock i would say.
If you have set to auto then good chance its overvolting it.

What does cpu-z say the vcore is?

Also dont use asus probe but real temp and core temp instead.
 
i'm thinking of getting the e8400 you have. how easy was it to overclock? did you just change the multiplier? did you need to ad any more voltage to the cpu to get it stable at 4ghz?
 
i'm thinking of getting the e8400 you have. how easy was it to overclock? did you just change the multiplier? did you need to ad any more voltage to the cpu to get it stable at 4ghz?

@Narn The multiplier is locked on the E8400. You would have to change the fsb and the vcore. Do not leave it on auto!

@OP, It's probably the auto voltage that is having problems with. Also, try stock speed and see what happens (if you havent already).
 
i'm thinking of getting the e8400 you have. how easy was it to overclock? did you just change the multiplier? did you need to ad any more voltage to the cpu to get it stable at 4ghz?

It was about 8 months ago and I didn't keep records of the settings but I just used the fsb settings to make the major adjustments. I think it was fine on auto CPU voltages up to about 442/443MHz then it would have trouble booting into windows even with increased voltage. However it started working properly again at an fsb of 450MHz but the temps started increasing very quickly and on my system would have needed water cooling to go further. I had to use the memory divider quite actively to stay around 1333MHz as the particular combination of memory and motherboard I have does not seem to like higher frequencies - even with relaxed timings. With regard to multipliers this CPU is not locked as it can be set anywhere between a miltiple of six and nine on the mobo but I just left it at nine all the way when overclocking.
Everywhere I have read about this processor tells me how cool it runs which is why I am curious about the temperatures of mine. I have been doing some reading about this and as a result used Real Temp to monitor the temperatures and this shows both cores idling at 39C compared to Asus Probe showing 50C. In addition RealTemp shows TjMax = 95C and the score for both cores on the "test sensors" is +4 which seems to indicate they are both working and reading correctly.
So now I know a bit more about the true temp on my cores - how do I stop the crashes under full load after four or five hours or is this considered to be normal?
 
Update - Having thought some more about my problem I slowed my processor down by lowering the multiple from nine to six. In other words it is now running at 2GHz rather than 3GHz. I have just completed a sixteen hour run of Prime95 without incident whereas before it would crash between four and five hours. The only major difference I have been able to notice is that my system is cooler than before - Real Temp has both cores at 49C under full load which is 4 or 5 degrees lower than before and seems to be sufficient to make the difference.
My working theory is that I need a new case. I built a brand new machine at the beginning of this year but I kept my old case which is a Lian Li 65 that used to house a P4C800 Deluxe with a 2.8 P4. The case is pretty full with my current set up and I had to shoehorn the CPU cooler (Tuniq 120) into the box and it just fits in no more. I don't think there is sufficient ventilation or cooling going on so I know what I want from Santa this year - a bigger box with bigger fans and greater airflow. So I'll just run the processor at this lower speed until then.
 
It might have been better to have left the cpu at stock speeds and manually set a vcore, then left the side of the case off so your PC doesn't get to hot to test it with prime.

As for a new case I'd recommend a P182. Both my Core temps are 25c in mine using a arctic freezer 7 (800rpm).
 
memtest86 isn't a reliable memory test. It doesn't stress the components as much as OCCT or Prime95. It could also be a GPU instability issue, you might want to test that with furmark and atitool set to maximum sensitivity (run furmark in the background to get the temperatures up).
 
I think a few may disagree with you here...:)

They can disagree all they like, but they'd be wrong. I've had memory reliably pass 24 hours of memtest86 only to consistently fail the OCCT and Prime95 within 3 minutes. In fact, I've seen memory pass a 24 hour memtest86 test when it wasn't even stable enough to complete booting Windows XP.
 
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