Hardware failure in prime 95

[qwoz]

So i recently installed windows 7 on my system . Today I did a prime 95 test on my Q9400 quadcore running at 3.6ghz. After about 15 min one of my prime 95 workers will stop running one of my cores due to a "hardware failure". Keep in mind this never used to happen when I had windows vista on my computer yesturday. Can anyone tell me what is going on and if this is a big issue? like always the highest temp my CPU reads in speedfan while im running prime 95 is about 66* C.
I am now using 64bit and before i was using 32 bit vista. Idk if this has something to do with it.

 

[orangegator]

Your overclock isn't stable. 64bit can be a little more stressfull on a cpu than 32bit, so that might explain why. Lower your overclock a little and test it again.

 

[qwoz]

does it really matter if my oc is slightly unstable? Like when is it ever going to be at 100% for 10 min strate?

 

[randomizer]

I second that. 64-bit code uses more transistors and that means higher chance that some won't be able to take the speed.

 

[randomizer]

does it really matter if my oc is slightly unstable? Like when is it ever going to be at 100% for 10 min strate?

It doesn't need to be at 100% to become unstable. It's just more likely to happen at 100% because more transistors are loaded. If you happen to load the unstable ones while running an Excel macro you'll probably get problems too. Stability is quite arbitrary, if it works for your purposes with no problems then by all means call it stable. But overclocking is a game of probability so don't wonder for too long what's going on when your partially stable overclock that has caused no problems for 6 months suddenly triggers a BSOD.

I for one don't do more than 2 hours of Prime95 testing as I don't see any reason to be more stable than that. Some people prefer 24-48 hours with a Memtest86+ salad on the side.

 

[pluke the 2]

does it really matter if my oc is slightly unstable? Like when is it ever going to be at 100% for 10 min strate?

Does it matter to you when you typed up twenty pages of an essay and lost it all without saving? Or, being in clan war and having your computer BSOD, making your team lose a very important game?

if no, you make just be sacrificing a little hardware longevity, proceed on.

Pluke out -