I7 920 quad core 2.6 overclock question

[teddysharons]

Intel Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz, 6.0GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4670
My ram sticks say Kingston HyperX
although, I'm not entirely sure about exact product.

I know this has been asked one thousand times before, but I really hope you guys can answer this short simple question.
FOR TL;DR go to the bottom

I've overclocked my 2.6 to a 3.8 and I love the speed difference.

I've watched the temps while idle and it doesn't rise over 46C

I've watched the temps while playing Portal 2, Fable III, Vindictus, Call of Duty 4, MW2 and Black ops, which all the games stated never caused my temps to rise above 48-55C's.

I've watched my temps while rendering an HD 1080p video in Sony Vegas and the temps raised to 78-80C's on 70% load.

I've watched my temps on Prime95 doing a blend test (8 tests in total) on 100% load for 5 minutes and went into a panic, since I seen how high the temps went. 88-94C's and it was only rising... I got so scared I stopped the test and shut my PC off.

I'm extremely new to Overclocking as you can tell. I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing, other than raising my Bclk to 190,

DDR3 ram set to 1523.

Voltage 1.35

DRAM Bus 1.64

*TLR*
My main question to you guys is.
If I can run an overclocked 2.6 at 3.8 at idle and 50 and < 50 loads while the temps are 60 and below, would I be okay?
I'm almost never running my PC on a full 100% load on all four cores.
I'd hate to run a prime95 for hours, let alone minutes... seems way too scary and harmful to my PC.

If I've been uninformative in anyway, please tell me and I'll try to re-inform anyone who is confused.

 

[cuecuemore]

You don't need to run prime95 for hours, but if you're using Vegas then you'll want to do some sort of stress testing. What kind of cooling are you using?

 

[teddysharons]

Cooler Master V8

 

[vigilante212]

Maybe it's not seated properly. It should cool really well and you only have a med high clock.

 

[cuecuemore]

^^ Yeah, you should be getting better temps than that, I don't own a 920 (or any i7) but IIRC, you should be able to keep temps in the 60s-low 70s(??) with a V8, which should be safe.

 

[teddysharons]

So you guys think on a full 100% load over clocked 2.6 to 3.8 should be on full 100% load 60's 70's C? Maybe I should dust, clean and re-seat my cooler and maybe more thermal paste if it's gone, or minimal.

 

[cuecuemore]

Try a reseat, make sure the fan is running at 100% (or at least able to achieve this if necessary), and make sure that the unit is mechanically sound.

 

[Cygnus x-1]

Do you have a DO stepping chip or CO/C1? If you have a DO, you can probably lower the voltage and remain stable. Even with the CO stepping your probably a bit high. MY CO/C1 does 3483ghz on 1.064v with 100 percent load as read in cpu-z.

Running prime95 won't hurt the chip as long as the temperature is in check, that's where lowering the voltage comes in to play. Intel warranties their chips for three years and that's assuming your going to be running heavy load. If not work stations and servers all over the world would be constantly failing.