Overclock failing after a year

[mjd]

Spec :

Vista Ultimate
E8400 @ 4GHz
P5Q Dlx
4GB Kingston PC2-6400
GF8500GT
1 x DVDRW
4 x HDD
Hiper 480w Type R PSU
Water cooled with innovatek kit. Idle 27/28C - Load < 50C

Problem :


I have had the setup above running for approximately a year.
Last week it started to show signs of a problem.
In short, if it was left off for a period of 8 hours or so, on switching on, it would get half way through booting and then restart.
I reinstalled Vista over the weekend and reinstated my 4GHz overclock. It ran all weekend without a hitch, even being left off Saturday night. Temperatures barely strayed above 30C all weekend.
I switched her on this morning to check my mail, and bang....back to square one.
Initially when this started to occur the mobo was suggesting an overclocking failure, but a bios update seemed to get rid of this.
I understand that I am probably going to spend the next few days going through a process of elimination, but would appreciate any thoughts or advice you may have on this problem. I am leaning towards the PSU myself.

Many thanks

MJD

 

[z0mbi3]

on my gigabyte ds3r I can hit 3ghz with one revision, but with a newer one I can only hit 2.8. I suppose thing ot do would be to check if it runs okay at slightly lower clocks.

 

[mjd]

Seems fine at stock and happy at 400FSB. The only other thing I may need to check before swapping hardware in and out is the memory timings and mem ratio.

 

[nbkpsycho]

This happend to me with my old E8300 @ 4ghz, It turned out the power supply was on its way out. Check the 12v rail on your power supply.

 

[Zenduri]

In my experience pc turning itself off = PSU on the way out, had it happen on 2 psu's

 

[mjd]

I'll be chuffed to bits if thats all it is
Thanks for the input.

 

[Richy1204]

Yes PSU

 

[mjd]

Anyone able to tell me if a Corsair 450w would be man enough as a replacement?

 

[JonJ678]

Yeah, it'll be happy and laughing at that load.

My first though was your ram degrading, as I think that set runs at 2.2 or 2.3V and ram doesn't really like voltage much. The psu does sound a better bet though

 

[Reality|Bites]

Run a spyware scan, I use Super antispyware
If asked to reboot to completely remove any harmful software, disable system restore before doing so.

Go into bios and load fail safes, save and exit
bios again and load optimal, save and exit.
bios again and set the system up how you would like running cpu at stock,
boot into windows
reboot into bios and set your overclock again.

 

[mjd]

Well I did a bit of poking around last night and came up with the following.

I switched the PC on for the first time that day and straight into the bios....bang....it restarts. So, I then went through all internal connections reseating ram etc.... and disconnected the PC from the mains for an hour. With all these restarts, my Vista installation carried out over the weekend had bitten the dust, so I reinstalled. No problems, got the drivers on, no restarts, nothing. Back into the bios clocked her back up to 4GHz and ran prime for about 3 hours. Again no problems. So it would appear I may have inadvertently sorted it out. Will just have to see how I get on tonight...fingers crossed.

I'm going to pick up a new PSU regardless, as its a few years old now and is letting the side down somewhat.

Thanks once again to everyone for their help.

 

[wolvers]

Hiper 480w Type R PSU

Whether it turns out to be the PSU, or not, I'd replace that Hiper anyway if it's a few years old. I believe that they've improved somewhat noe but the older ones are prone to failures.

I, like many others, have had one fail on me. There's a big thread on here somewhere about the 'hiper explosive club'.