Stability after few months - E4300 @ 3Ghz...

[euro]

i bought my PC in January/February. You can see the specs in sig.
I right away OCed my e4300 to 333 Mhz x 9 = 3.0 Ghz. Workd right off the bat (I know I should have taken it easy, read a lot of posts here about how it will do it with my RAM and my PSU and my cooler, so I just did it).

I did the whole 9 yards, mem test, coretemp, Prime95 stress test on each core, all looked good. I guess I should mention I also OC my Video card, from factory 450/660 to 550/760 with ATI Tool (tho I went to 650/860 and it was stable, I keep it at 550/760.

What happens now - is my PC sometimes reboots out of blue - and it seems like it was starting to do it more often (once a day). Nothing gets logged in System Event Viewer, but I haven't bummped up the logging. I know it could be OS or application issue (I play LOTRO - Lord of the Rings Online MMO), I think it's OCed CPU (I tried playing with Vid card not OCed and reboot happened).

I reduced OC lvl to 300 Mhz x 9 multiplier - to 2.7 Ghz and reboots are not happening... While I guess you could say I fixed my problem, what do I want now - I was hoping you gods and gurus of hardware who hang out on these boards will tell me an easy thing I can try to get it back to being stable at 3 Ghz again...?

Thanks!

 

[NightlySputnik]

It's a known fact that agressive overclock don't last long. That's exactly why my E6600 is OCed to "only" 3.0GHz (333*9, just like you). This is because the extra voltage apply to your cpu slowly deteriorate the interconnections inside your cpu.

Take me as an exemple. I did my OC without even having to push for it. I never had any reboot and my temps never exceeded 40C on cool days and 45-6 the day we reached 30C (86F) here in Montreal. I'm sure I could have reached 3.6 (9*400), but never tried 'cause I knew I was gonna get BSOD or plain reboot after a while.

The other possible cause (that you might already know) of your problem would be accumulated dust. Open up your case and check to make sure there isn't any dust over your heatsink. If there is, buy a can of pressured air and spray it over it. You should see dust flying away. Avoid vaccuing (wrong spell, sorry, my french speaking can't help me here ) your heatsink because the vaccum tips has static electricity sometime to grab dust as you go over it. That's good for dust, but bad for your electrical parts. Well, maybe I'm wrong, but until prooved wrong, avoid it.

Good luck.

P.S.: Did you check your cpu temps before reboot? If it isn't above 50C, you can probably raise your voltage a bit to help keep it stable. The dommages I mentionned above usually occur when your CPU temp gets high. The rate of the damage also raise exponentionnaly with temps. So the higher the T, the bigger the damages.

 

[euro]

I'll check my temps but last I looked my Zalman was keeping it relly cool. The dust doesmake sence tho, I have to check for that too!

I never increased the voltage when I went from stock 1.8 to 3 Ghz - it worked fine. Dont think that would be something that got changed in three motnhs - and now its needed?

Thanks.

 

[NightlySputnik]

OK,

You should avoid raising it more then 0.05V anyway.

Sorry I can't help you more. I'll get back if I think of something.