i5-3450 - BSOD on Prime95 max load; stock speed, voltage increased. HELP!

makarov

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Dec 11, 2012
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Hi everyone,

I'm upgrading my G860 to an i5-3450 Ivy Bridge. Motherboard is an ECS H61H2-M2 (v1.0). After the install, I could not get Windows to boot without a BSOD (throwing an 0x124 error). Windows Boot Disk did the same. After some reading online, I disabled C6 Report in the bios, which allowed me to boot up.

After installing some drivers and getting settled in, I tried running Prime95 which resulted in an instant BSOD. After some reading, I found in the bios a place to increase my voltage in steps of (1/256) of a volt. I can enter values of 1-255. Setting the value to 5 (I assume +.02 volts) really helped the stability. I was able to play Fall Out Vegas for 10 minutes without issues.

I decided to try Prime95 again, with resource manager and HWMonitor running. RM showed all Cores at 100% and the Package Temperature in HWMonitor rose from an idle of 39-40C to roughly 70C and BSOD'd after a second or two.

My questions:

1) Do you think my Prime95 BSOD because of heat issues or because of lack of voltage?

2) Will the additional voltage hurt my processor? I've never overclocked/overvolted, so I'm a little worried here.

3) Should I invest in better cooling over a stock heatsink?

Thank you in advance for your help! Here are some readings at near idle for reference (laugh at CPU-Z's misvoltage reading - I almost pooped a brick when I first read it):
3450.png

 

makarov

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Dec 11, 2012
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Yes - the board only supports the 3450 on the newest bios update; without the update, it would not boot to Windows.

Bios is the newest version and the 3450 is properly identified in the CPU settings.

Thanks for your response and also in advance for any other responses. I appreciate any help I can get here...
 

makarov

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Dec 11, 2012
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I think I might've figured this out. My memory is DDR3-1333 and I read that the default ram speed for IB is DDR3-1600.

Could that be the issue or can I run DDR3-1333 with an IB CPU?
 

makarov

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Dec 11, 2012
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I went ahead and ordered a new motherboard today. I'm a little worried that the MB didn't like my bios upgrade and isn't properly volting the CPU. i also purchased an aftermarket heatsink to help.