Frequent short freezes - overclocking related?

[pengjn]

Hi all,

 

I built my first ever rig this weekend, which i bought because BS looks so incredible. I've done a little flying but whenever i try to clock my i7 above 3.2MHz it seems that BS gets upset and freezes for about 0.5 seconds before continuing with good frame rates. I *think* it's OC related beacuse with lower mhz i get normal behvaiour.

 

ANyone seen this and have a solution?

 

i7 D0 stepping, Asus p6t deluxe v2, bfg gtx 285 ocx, ocz blade 6gb 16000, w7 64 rc

 

Yours,

Jim

[EtherealN]

Have you done a proper burn-in with a stress-tester like Orthos? (Preferably run Prime95 for at LEAST an hour on every core simultaneously while also running the memory stresser.)

 

If you get any error reports, you are right at the edge of what your computer manages to sustain without frying itself and you should back off.

 

Another note is that I have seen similar behaviour in a laptop of mine when it was overheating (dust in the heat sink). Ensure that you run a temperature monitor for your cores while stresstesting. If the core temperatures exceed 70ish degrees Celcius I would recommend taking it slower. If it approaches 80+ you should immediately discontinue testing, apologise profusely to your CPU (buy it some flowers) and purchase a better CPU cooler (or re-attach yours, if you already have an after-market cooler - the thermal paste might have been poorly applied). If you have never worked with thermal paste yourself before, read a LOT of articles on it first. There are several mistakes to be made that can cause the magic smoke to escape, and since most of them are pretty simple to evade through simply knowing about them you really should take the time to do that - that is, if you haven't done stuff like that before.

 

If going the re-attachement route, ensure that you first have a proper cleaning agent meant for use on heat sinks and CPU's, and some spare thermal paste. Otherwise you'll be sitting there with a computer you can't even test until you get that bought. :P

 

Basically, most modern motherboards have a stepping feature where, if the CPU approaches a specific thermal threshold (usually around 80-100 degrees C), they'll start skipping cycles in order to reduce the heat generation. This will cause dramatically reduced performance for a short while.

 

If you have overclocked your memory, ensure to test it as well. If your sticks have temperture sensors, monitor their temperature.

Edited May 17, 2009 by EtherealN