PC Crashes Every Few Days

[Steven Clowry]

I overclocked my i7 965 Extreme Edition via the bios and every 2 or less days it crashes, I have completely run out of ideas of what to do so I come here for help, the best I can do it post my specs and pics of the bios and hopefully someone can help me...

My specs;

i7 965 Extreme Edition
HD 7970
6gb Ram
P6T SE Mobo
750 PSU


BIOS;

http://i.imgur.com/unyrQ05.png

http://i.imgur.com/p5djhq0.png

http://i.imgur.com/ZzjRzHo.png


So after reading and looking, any ideas for me? :/

 

[scout_03]

your overclock is to high and ram voltage get in the red value lower the overclock .

 

[immortalpenguin9]

this overclock may not be stable...try downloading prime95 and running a stress test. You may instantly crash or see each core fail as the workload gets to much for the core to handle at that clock. If so try taking it down a notch or 2 and try again. My 8150 could run at 4.8 but would crash every few days just as your I7 does. I dialed it back to 4.5 and its been smooth sailing ever since

 

[Steven Clowry]

your overclock is to high and ram voltage get in the red value lower the overclock .

What exactly should I lower and lower it to what?

 

[Steven Clowry]

this overclock may not be stable...try downloading prime95 and running a stress test. You may instantly crash or see each core fail as the workload gets to much for the core to handle at that clock. If so try taking it down a notch or 2 and try again. My 8150 could run at 4.8 but would crash every few days just as your I7 does. I dialed it back to 4.5 and its been smooth sailing ever since

What exactly should I lower and lower it to what?

 

[scout_03]

put it back to auto for the ai overclock tuner .

 

[Steven Clowry]

put it back to auto for the ai overclock tuner .

Is that all and what will that do?

 

[immortalpenguin9]

you pry have the multiplier up too high...back it down some and see what happens...if you mess with the voltages things can go bad quickly. Always make very small changes and stay aware of your temps at all times. The higher you attempt to clock your I7 the higher your voltages must go, and the higher the voltage the more heat. And really less then .1 volts can drastically change the heat output and cook it pretty quickly.

 

[immortalpenguin9]

do u know what the stock voltage, bclk and cpu ratio is? if not go back to stock and check CPUZ and that will let u know. from there small changes and you should be fine. and 1.55 is kind of high on the ram but not bad high.

 

[immortalpenguin9]

I can try to make an example with my 8150 I originally wanted 4.8ghz but I knew it was high... so I set the multiplier to make it so...think for me that was 25 or something like that...I left the voltage stock at 1.3 and realized there was no way in hell that was going to happen it crashed instantly. From there I noticed under turbo my voltage would hit 1.4125 and that the heat generated from that was tolerable so I manually set it to 1.4125 and started aiming for different goals. First attempt was 4.8 again and I got it to start but was unstable. I then tried 1.45 which ran but wasn't 100% stable and getting on the hotter side. I then went for broke and did 1.5 and yes it ran but I could have made bacon and eggs on my cpu. From there I decided to go and shoot for a moderate 4.5 and everything was fine running at 1.4125 and I never break 60C

 

[immortalpenguin9]

now the cpu ratio is the safest thing to adjust so stick with that. find out what it is stock and bump it up a little. get as high as you can without crashing and watch your temps. If everything is okay bring your voltage up one step and try again. Once again heat is your biggest enemy and can cause probs fast

 

[Steven Clowry]

now the cpu ratio is the safest thing to adjust so stick with that. find out what it is stock and bump it up a little. get as high as you can without crashing and watch your temps. If everything is okay bring your voltage up one step and try again. Once again heat is your biggest enemy and can cause probs fast

ah I'm still pretty confused here man I just don't understand :/ so I put it back to stock and what do I do from there? I won't be able to try this till I get home later

 

[immortalpenguin9]

LOL I feel your pain man my first time trying to figure all of this out was like getting hit in the head with a sledgehammer. Basically when at stock you need to know what all the settings are at. A program called cpuz tells you this. http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html now from there you make small jumps to the multiplier...if you click the link i put up above it shows its at 22 which is the 30 u have on your bios screen aka cpu ratio. now for example i would try to jump from 22 to maybe something like 25 which would bring you from running at 2931 to 3330 which is a decent overclock. now if you look at that pic in the link above again you see that it currently runs at 1.216 to achieve its base clock of 2931. Now you can get lucky and it just works at the stock voltage or it doesn't and we have to raise this voltage which is cpu pll voltage in your bios. remember make very small steps from the stock in this case which is 1.216 to something which would be more like 1.255 or whatever the next small jump would be in this case(different on every mobo ive owned so far) Now we would try to start again. Make sure to have something to watch your temps like a program called core temp is very good. If it does now start and run fine make sure under load your temps don't get to high. Use a program called prime95 and run the torture test. This will one show how hot you will run under an extreme load and 2 show if your overclock is stable. If the temps get to high back down your voltage and drop your ratio down. if your temps stay fine but you crash or the cores start to drop one by one. increase the voltage again one small bump and try again.

 

[Steven Clowry]

LOL I feel your pain man my first time trying to figure all of this out was like getting hit in the head with a sledgehammer. Basically when at stock you need to know what all the settings are at. A program called cpuz tells you this. http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html now from there you make small jumps to the multiplier...if you click the link i put up above it shows its at 22 which is the 30 u have on your bios screen aka cpu ratio. now for example i would try to jump from 22 to maybe something like 25 which would bring you from running at 2931 to 3330 which is a decent overclock. now if you look at that pic in the link above again you see that it currently runs at 1.216 to achieve its base clock of 2931. Now you can get lucky and it just works at the stock voltage or it doesn't and we have to raise this voltage which is cpu pll voltage in your bios. remember make very small steps from the stock in this case which is 1.216 to something which would be more like 1.255 or whatever the next small jump would be in this case(different on every mobo ive owned so far) Now we would try to start again. Make sure to have something to watch your temps like a program called core temp is very good. If it does now start and run fine make sure under load your temps don't get to high. Use a program called prime95 and run the torture test. This will one show how hot you will run under an extreme load and 2 show if your overclock is stable. If the temps get to high back down your voltage and drop your ratio down. if your temps stay fine but you crash or the cores start to drop one by one. increase the voltage again one small bump and try again.

Okay I understand now, I have them programs so that's good, I'll just send you a pm when I get home okay? Thanks for all this

 

[immortalpenguin9]

sure its kind of late where i live...actually 3am but ill be up for awhile longer...ill pry check back in about an hour

 

[Steven Clowry]

sure its kind of late where i live...actually 3am but ill be up for awhile longer...ill pry check back in about an hour

It's. 8am here lol

 

[immortalpenguin9]

hey did you get anywhere on your overclocking adventure?

 

[Steven Clowry]

hey did you get anywhere on your overclocking adventure?

Still in school 🙁

 

[immortalpenguin9]

sounds like fun lol. anyway let me know how things go.

 

[Steven Clowry]

sounds like fun lol. anyway let me know how things go.

Could you wrote out the steps for me if you could so I can get right at it when I get home?

 

[immortalpenguin9]

1. Go completely back to stock settings
2. Use CPUZ to find out all of the stock info, you will need to know the stock multiplier which in you bios is cpu ratio and stock voltage which is cpu pll voltage in bios
3. now make a small jump in the cpu ratio...say its 20 stock go to 22
4. Run prime95 torture test...see if pc crashes or if each worker starts to fail.
5. If all is well and no crashes bring the ratio up to say 24 or 25
6. Re run prime95 and see what happens.
7. If you do crash increase your voltage in very small increments literally one step at a time(I know with amd turbo jumped my voltage to 1.4 which was just about where I needed to leave it for 4.5ghz from 4.2)
8. As you increase your voltage on the cpu it will now generate more heat so this is when coretemp is a must. watch your temps as you run prime95 and see how hot you get after a few minutes. I prefer to keep under 60c because that is usually the threshold on most cpus even though some can get to as high as 80c
9. NEVER make a drastic jump in cpu voltage. I did 1.5 which is only .1 higher than 1.4 and it was a massive change in heat that would never be safe. It only took from 1.4 to 1.4125 to make my cpu stable
10. DONT mess with BCLK...this is your base clock for your entire computer and yes increasing this will over clock your cpu it also overclocks everything from your northbridge to your ram and will shorten the life of all of your components over time. I personally raised mine a little bit to achieve a more stable 4.5 but as for you just starting out I would avoid it to not fry your whole system

 

[immortalpenguin9]

Also say you do get a stable overclock by raising you voltage and all is well with your temps, you can then slightly raise the cpu ratio again until you crash then back it back down to the last stable ratio