Weirdness - 8hrs Prime and IBT stable but now won't boot?

reflux · 20 Nov 2009 at 20:42

Got delivery of a shiny new i7 920 D0 this morning. Got into Windows @ 4.2ghz, and ran IBT on standard, five passes. Everything OK. Then I ran Prime for eight hours (blend). Everything OK.

....but as soon as I exited Prime (after running it for 8 hours), the entire system locked up. And now it won't boot at all at 4.2; gets half way through loading Windows and then blue screens. I've increased a couple of the volts a bit but I'm reluctant to do it much because they're pretty high already.

I also tried 20x210 which boots but fails IBT.

Does anyone have any ideas? This has really puzzled me.

These are the settings I'm using:

DragonQ · 20 Nov 2009 at 21:12

Do you have C states enabled? If so, turn them off, that might be the problem (if you have C states enabled then you're likely to get blue screens whilst idle because the voltage is lowering too much when it enters those C states to save power).

Mrjobby · 20 Nov 2009 at 22:24

Id back down to find a more reasonable 24/7 overclock.

What does 4ghz take voltswise?

reflux · 21 Nov 2009 at 01:20

DragonQ said:
Do you have C states enabled? If so, turn them off, that might be the problem (if you have C states enabled then you're likely to get blue screens whilst idle because the voltage is lowering too much when it enters those C states to save power).

That seems to have proper sorted it, boots nicely and passes 20 runs of IBT. Cheers

Mrjobby said:
Id back down to find a more reasonable 24/7 overclock.

What does 4ghz take voltswise?

Yeah, might be a good idea but my C0 did 3.8 so if I back down to 4 then the new chip'll be a bit of a waste of cash. I'm in two minds really, would like c-states (saves 10w or something) on but also need powah. Probably a case of money burning a hole in my pocket again lol. Maybe I shoulda stuck with what I had.

alex24 · 21 Nov 2009 at 01:26

Well now you've done the money run it's fine.

Why on earth do you need that much power anyway? I doubt there's much that would tame an i7, even at stock.

reflux · 21 Nov 2009 at 01:28

alexhull24 said:
Why on earth do you need that much power anyway? I doubt there's much that would tame an i7, even at stock.

A fast CPU makes me look like teh win obviously.

Seriously though I have no idea. I'm just never happy with my PC, always got to be fiddling with or tweaking or buying something.

alex24 · 21 Nov 2009 at 01:34

Well that's why I joined the forum anyway! I usually just put it down to a reasonable clock when i'm finished titting around. I don't like running a lot more volts than the VID to be honest, though depends on the chip. I know what you mean though. I've been messing around with hard drives and reseating my cooler just this evening - it's never ending. Kind of annoyed though as my Q6600 is running too hot at idle for no reason I can fathom.

It looks like you're on the limit of that chip anyway, I'd just knock it down to where you're happy and upgrade something else! It does sound like the C state could be causing the problem though, crashing when it's likely to be changing down sounds ominous.

What cooling are you taming that beast with out of interest?

setter · 21 Nov 2009 at 02:49

Same here, when i first joined the forum i knew sod all about overclocking, after a while i got a bit more confident, my first major oc was an E6600 at 3.7ghz on a 680i mobo, next step was a q6600 at 3.8ghz on a p45 board, pretty tricky. I then got a q9550, 3.825ghz with it was a breeze, ive since switched to an i7 rig, currently at 3.8ghz, and im totally amazed with it, runs nice and cool, easy to overclock and the option of x16 xfire or sli if i ever need it, the biggest letdown in my system is my boot hdd, a samsung f1 320gb, time for an ssd drive.

Hotwired · 21 Nov 2009 at 03:00

Before you know it that 1TB SSD will look too tempting

I like the power saving modes on my computer. Lowers voltage, lowers bus speed, lowers multi. Power on demand though.

If it wasn't for those I'd probably not bother overclocking, scoffing power when I spend most computer time just naffing about on low requirement stuff... no point for me.

setter · 21 Nov 2009 at 03:02

Vcore voltage seem pretty high reflux, im no expert on i7 overclocking, but ive been tweaking mine this week at 3.8ghz (21x183), vcore 1.2750, qpi, 1.300, had a few issues on lower voltages on vcore /qpi, gave ioh, ich a rise to 1.2 which helped, theese chips run pretty hot. Any voltage i can keep to the minimum certainly helps.