Sudden decrease in FSB overclock stability on E5200

pellik

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Jun 7, 2009
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I put together a cheap overclocked gaming rig about three months ago:
E5200 with XIG 1283
ASUS P5Q SE PLUS
asus radeon 4870
4gb dominator memory
antec 500W PS
etc.

I found my FSB was nice and stable at 339MHz with FSB voltage at 1.3. I eventually settled on a 11x multi and vcore of 1.36 (I had to set it at 1.4 to get it there). This ran mostly stable (fine with orthos, OCCT, super-pi), except every few days it would randomly reboot when I was playing Empire: Total War.

Last night I had to move my computer from one room to another, which I did pretty carefully and without incident. But somehow my OC became completely unstable. Now with any FSB above 330 I get corrupt or missing file errors (failed checksum) on core windows files and it doesn't even approach booting. 300-330 churn out BSODs. So now I'm at a 300MHz FSB with the same 11x multi and I severely doubt it will pass a full night of Orthos.

What do you guys thing went wrong with the move? My best guesses are that the big XIG fan may have unsettled the CPU a little (temps are about the same as before, though), the NB feels a little hot and I haven't done anything to the stock thermal compound on the MB so that's on my mind, and finally I'm wondering if using a different outlet could be making a difference. I don't have a UPS on there just surge protector (...). I'd appreciate any thoughts you guys could give me. I don't want a flat out 10% reduction in performance.
 

hundredislandsboy

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Well, three months of full-time overclocking your e5200's stock fsb by 70% and 1.4 vcore is a feat in itself. Worst case scenario, CPU degradation rears its ugly head. Best case scenario, the top heavy CPU cooler shifted slightly and maybe just one core runs too hot to remain stable at your previous OC setting.

Do you have another motherboard to test the CPU? Set the CPU to a multiplier of 10 and keep the 339 Mhz to see if it holds. If it doesn't then the CPU is possibly degrading. Run it on stock amd see if it passes Prime 95 overnight.