What do you consider a stable overclock?

FiCtioN75

FiCtioN75

FiCtioN75

Associate
Joined
7 May 2010
Posts
413
Location
Newcastle
As the title says really. I know there are numerous stress testing programmes but what do you personally consider stable before you start getting more out of your chip? I generally run 40 runs of IBT on high or sometimes 10 on maximum but im after some incite into the experienced overclockers general stability rules.

- FiCtioN
 
A pc that behaves exactly the same way and can do everything it can do at stock setting.

500 Runs IBT for me - noticed this is usually where most errors on slightly unstable overclocks happen, probably would be 100% fine with 100 runs or so but a lot of the time i've noted errors happening around 200-400 mark, no idea why. Usually only a voltage notch away from rock solid stability.

24-48hrs Prime and a fair few loops of 3d mark and things should be good.
 
Personally I use OCCT 1hr to check roughly what settings are stable, then Prime95 for 24 hours and play a few games. If it passes that with no crashes I am happy.
 
20 runs of Linx to give me ball park stability.

Then a good 8hr+ run of Prime.

Hasn't failed me yet.
 
Intel burn test is a good test even 5x standard test will normally fail if it's not stable.But Probably best to set to maximum and run it 20x at least then run prime 95.The length to run prime is debatable I am sure some people have ran prime stable 8 hours plus and then later found system crashing and so on.
 
Justintime said:
A pc that behaves exactly the same way and can do everything it can do at stock setting.

500 Runs IBT for me - noticed this is usually where most errors on slightly unstable overclocks happen, probably would be 100% fine with 100 runs or so but a lot of the time i've noted errors happening around 200-400 mark, no idea why. Usually only a voltage notch away from rock solid stability.

24-48hrs Prime and a fair few loops of 3d mark and things should be good.
Click to expand...

what setting do you have for 500 runs of ibt? i seem to be constantly stress testing my chip surely this is going to reduce the life of the chip right?
 
For me personally, if the rig will do EVERYTHING you built it to actually do, it's stable. I don't care if it won't run Prime95 for 7 years as long as Battlefield does not crash.
 
I agree with this^ but its embarresing when your showing of your rig and it becomes unstable just at the wrong time!!
 
I run prime on all 4 cores for 8 hours, then if it passes then thats good for me. I only game so i'm never gonna max out 4 cores on my cpu no matter what so this is enough for me. If your gona be doing any encoding etc with all cores maxed you may wana go deeper into it

Dan
 
FiCtioN75 said:
what setting do you have for 500 runs of ibt? i seem to be constantly stress testing my chip surely this is going to reduce the life of the chip right?
Click to expand...

Just set to max with 500. As long as temps and voltages are reasonable under max load (about 25C away from Tjmax for me) i don't see how it could cause any real damage to the chip to be honest, certainly if running at full bore 24/7 was an issue a lot of rendering/folding pcs would die a lot earlier! It is painfully slow with 12GB RAM though!

On my rigs with a mix of 65nm and 45nm Quads plus one i7 I find:
2Gb - Quick
4Gb - Quick
6Gb - Getting a little long but still reasonable
8Gb - arrgh
12gb - omfg
 
Last edited:
Yellowbeard said:
For me personally, if the rig will do EVERYTHING you built it to actually do, it's stable. I don't care if it won't run Prime95 for 7 years as long as Battlefield does not crash.
Click to expand...

usually if i failed IBT id drop it or change something but last time i failed on last run of IBT at max but i forgot to lower and have been playing bc2 since with no hiccups
 
for me if it can't take 10 mins of Prime 95 it's not going to be game stable,

I generally won't run it for more than 2hrs though seeing as when stress testing you should be with the PC all the time for a number of reasons
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom