Overclocking failed

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:42 am

I was playing a online game when things got real laggy and then froze up completly. Couldn't even hit start/shut down to turn the computor of. Reboot just got me to start screen to I finally pulled the plug.
This morning I plugged back in, start computor and get \"Overclocking Failed\" message. Now I've had the comp. OC'd for a month or 2 and no problems with heat on any of the 4 cores (intel q6600). So I'm posting here to get some pointers on what to do next before I fubar something. I'm in the bios and don't see any changes.
I'm wondering, would I get OC failed message if ram mem went bad? Any thoughts appreciated.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:53 am

Well I simply saved changes (didn't change anything) and now I booted back to winxp with no problem. Doing a Malware scan to see ig anything is there. Still would like your input as to why the occurance happened

SuperSheep · Post by **SuperSheep** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 12:19 pm

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2066067.php

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 12:55 pm

Thanks Sheep. Looked at link and problem there seems to revolve around PSU. In mine I have a 750 watt PC Power & Cooling psu:

http://www.pcpower.com/power-supply/sil ... black.html

So unless something is faulty with the unit, my power should be sufficient for comp. needs. The MB is a ASU P5Q delux so maybe there was some quirk with bios but I am not techy enough to cipher it out yet. Any possibility a virus could be at fault? No malware was detected and am now doing a system defrag.

SuperSheep · Post by **SuperSheep** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 2:01 pm

In my experience, I have had more RAM issues when overclocking than CPU issues. I can't imagine a scenario where a virus would be responsible but it never hurts to check.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 2:59 pm

Need a full description of your PC to come up w/ guesses..

(Eg. you probably would have to up the NB voltage a bit IF you have 4 memory modules installed.)

Meanwhile, how and what did you overclock ? The most easy way to OC a Q6600 is to increase the FSB to 333. Chances are that you don't have to change anything else. I have mine folding 24/7 w/ that setting.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 5:12 pm

OK, I downloaded AVIRA, ran it and cleared a couple trojans:
tr/killav.28714
tr/trash.gen

Checked for malware and none found.
Defragged the harddrive.
Removed Ahead Nero (burning software)

Now in my other topic I was telling how I could not install the Witcher or Fallout 3 but now I can (woot)
Not sure which item I did that cured this problem.

Grendel, all I changed was cpu multiplier to 9 and fsb to 333 (3 gig speed). Don't know if lowering the multipier and raising the fsb would make any difference. CPU voltage I have at 1.4. Temps were running around +/- 50c under game play. Thoughts? Until the freeze up things were stable. I will be upping FSB to 366 to attain 3.3 gig and will have to fiddle with voltage once I see how hot the cores get.
I don't plan on going any higher speed wise as I'm air cooling cpu with a Zalman 9500.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 5:44 pm

Setting the MP to 9 just locks it at the top (range is 6-9) and disables SpeedStep, ie. clocking down the CPU when idle. The 333 FSB is doing the OC, did you try the CPU voltage on Auto w/ that ? (That's what I use, voltage on auto, no MP lock, all power savings enabled -- don't see higher than 45C temp/core under 100% load w/ an AC Freezer 7) There's a logarithmic relationship betw. OC and resulting problems, if you don't really need more speed I would recommend leaving it at <= 3GHz.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:07 pm

I tend to agree that with recent C2D and Athlon processors, overclocking is kind of unnecessary unless you really have a use for it like video encoding or something that gets a good payoff from cranking the chip higher. I haven't yet bothered to mess with my E6600 because the only places where my system hits its limits are in video games, and that is more the video cards burden than the CPU. Just by replacing/upgrading my video card I could double or triple the performance in some games without touching the rest of the system. And if I wanted to improve performance in some other heavily CPU bound task like video encoding, I wouldn't bother with overclocking much either, I'd just throw more cores at it.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 9:43 pm

Grendel, I'm not sure but I thought I read somewhere that setting cpu voltage to auto may cause problems with heat issue in the cores as auto mode will run max voltage when not needed. Setting a fixed value eliminates voltage fluctuations. The trick is to set voltage to a minimum value where cpu is stable and heat is at a minimum. Correct me if I wrong.

Krom, I agree about not OC'ng any more than needed. I did because my on line game (Eve Online) is CPU intensive. So I may leave OC'ing at the 3 gig mark for now as fps are pretty decent.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:06 pm

The Auto setting just selects the voltage the chip is specified for. If the BIOS is smart it may over-volt a bit if it detects OC but I'm not sure that'll happen w/ your board. Another advantage of the Auto setting is that it permits automatically lowering the voltage if SpeedStep kicks in, resulting in lower power consumption and less heat overall. I would give it a try and check how the temps do and if it's stable. (In order for the CPU power savings to work, enable them in the BIOS and set the power sheme to \"Minimal Power Management\" in Windows).

The way you had (or have) it set up, your CPU runs at full speed/max. voltage all the time. Having a fixed voltage value will not change the voltage flux, it's a result of your CPUs fluctuating power demand under load.

In general you are right tho, when OCing you try to find the \"sweet\" spot of speed you can reach w/o violating the voltage specs and not burning up the chip. In detail there are many caveats tho, eg. if you get close to max. ratings things like electromigration could happen which will degrade the silicon die at an accelerated rate and may cause instabilities w/in a (relative) short period of time. The beauty of the Q6600 is that in most cases it can be OCed to 3GHz w/o increasing the voltage, keeping everything and everyone involved happy

BTW, here is an article about OCing the newer 45nm Core chips, it gives you a good idea how power, voltage & frequency are interconnected and eg. why it's a bad idea to enable \"Load Line Calibration\" in the BIOS (if your BIOS offers it that is).