The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

Yeah, Agreed on that one.

 

Well my current PSU is a 450W so I wanted t get higher just to make sure I'm not using too much wattage from all my parts.

I'll look into it and see if I can get a fairly stable one if that's what the problem is. I don't think it should be the PSU only because this whole message started coming up after I overclocked my PC.

I've also never changed any of the voltages. I was afraid I would screw one up and cause a fire

 

rvinkebob,

That's not very likely! before anything could get that hot, the computer would shut down. When you look for a power supply, pass on the ones that don't give an efficiency rating. If in doubt, most retailers offer links to the manufacturer's web site and usually even the product page. Look there if none is offered. 70% and up will usually do you unless you have a power hungry video card or something like that.

When you overclock, the power demands of your CPU goes up. That increases the draw of power available on the power supply. Also on an older system like yours, components like capacitors on the MB break down more easily because of their age. I don't know how old your motherboard is but socket 754 is a couple of generations back. Newegg carries about 21 different ones compared to 22 for socket 939 and 140 for socket AM2. It doesn't mean you have a bad computer, just that the technology has eclipsed it.

I wouldn't put a lot of money into it but socket 754 motherboards can be had for relatively cheap now, but they won't be around for ever. The advantage is you can use what you have. Drives, memory depending on if it's D-Ram or DDR, and your video card if it's not an on-board. I just wouldn't spend too much money on older tech! A better choice for now is to get what you need to make yours work properly, if you can and save up to buy something you can build that's new tech! You will find that you can build a new C2D or 64x2 for less money than the AMD cost when it was new.

Clock On,
theone :>}

 

I looked into buying a whole new set a while back and found it was cheaper than my whole current PC cost all together. But I'm satisfied with what I have, unless the whole thing is going to die soon. This PC was meant to be a custom bargain.

Anyway I have a new issue and a new thought on the reason for the error. About 3 hours ago, after it restarted... again, I couldn't boot into Windows at all. The error came at the boot screen and the whole PC just froze after that point. So, as I would when ever there's a boot problem, I ran XP in safemode and it ran with half of a surprisement.

I'm starting to think that maybe a driver interference is causing it but I have no clue on how to diagnose the problem. For some reason the error never came up when I was playing a game. It ran for as long as I played. DirectX issue? Such as, when it isn't running there seems to be a conflict yet when it is everything is as smooth as silk.

Also after clearing CMOS a second time Ubuntu never gave me one error and ran as usual. This raises the driver interference thought even more.

 

rvinkebob,

You say it won't boot into windows! What does it do? Does it sit there with the blue line running under the Windows XP sign by Chance???

Clock On,
theone
:>}

 

No, it sits there with the blue line frozen. I used system restore and it booted into XP with full driver support and everything. Then I reset and then it froze at the welcome screen after you type your password. It just froze and gave no message. I think my computer's tired of handing out blue tickets :S

Well I think I should re-install because this is turning out to be a whole Windows XP issue seeing as everything else now works. I just re-installed around the beginning of July. I do fresh setups every 6 months to get rid of scattered junk. Ugghhh, backing all of the data up is the worst part.

 

You have got rid of your overclock right? That's one of the most common crashes ever in overclocking.

 

rvinkebob,

How old is your hard drive? Brand, type and capacity. I suspect that it's IDE and not sata. Low voltage can cause corruption of your windows installation. I'm having somewhat the same problem with mine at the moment. I believe it was caused by a defective Power Supply. Do you have Everest or speed fan. If you do and it's not installed install it and see what your voltages are 3.3v, 5v and 12v. So far on mine it just won't let me run one program which I installed after this problem happened. It won't let me run Core Temp.

I got my PS replaced by Thermaltake under warranty because my 12v was only putting out 11.39 at the motherboard. This time the 12v is there because I checked at the molex plugs to see if it was different than the defective one and the 12v coming from the PS is 12.01v. The computer still reports 11.39v with the new one, so the MB is the problem. Specifically what mine was doing was the voltage would drop with a moderate load and the memory voltage would fluctuate. If it dropped to 1.8v, the computer would just freeze solid as minimum for my memory is 1.9v. I would have to turn the Power supply off to get it to reboot. It would also reset my bios same as yours, but mine's an active bios so fixing it was just a couple of simple adjustments, turning the Autos back to manual. My motherboard is going bact to GigaByte tomorrow or Tuesday as they feel there's something wrong with the voltage management so they're going to replace it!

You said something about a driver and that's the first error message I got that a .dll was missing. I tried installing windows over itself because it wouldn't let me do a repair, and that helped but there a couple of things in windows that don't work, so it's probibly corrupted. That's why I asked about the hard drive. It sounds like it is getting errors. Whether is being caused by the drive, low voltage or some other problem, I don't know but if you will get me the voltages, I'll have a better idea. You also might run chkdsk from the run line and when you re-boot it will check the disk for errors. Just click the start button, click run and type it in and hit enter.

Let me know what you find!

Best Regards,
theone :>}

 

It's interesting that a Power supply can corrupt files, but you're right, if the voltage isn't there to keep the hard disk working properly, there are going to be issues. Of course Power supplies can also destroy hard drives, as I've found out of my cost on a couple of occasions.

 

PSU

speedfan reports my 3.3 @ 3.07

everest home and ultimate reports it as 3.3

not realy sure which to trust ill have a look on sandra and see what that reports.

Mind you I recently lost a maxtor diamond max 10 200gig when a chip on the circuit board actualy burst into flames lol

 

That's insane, you can get smoke out of components when they break, but fire?

 

yeh thats what i thought, im currently waiting for a new drive from segate, theyre sending me back a segate drive instead of a maxtor, as I dont want the risk again.

I looked around on the net and found its happened to a few people,

http://www.dragonsteelmods.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=351&Itemid=1

 

That's obscene, I guess there was a severe unexpected manufacturing issue with that chip! They're sending back a Seagate because as you may or may not know, Seagate own Maxtor now.

 

yeh I know, but i requested the seagate as I didnt want a diamond max 10 again, they were used in apple macs for a while and they had a lot of these little chip explosions / fires.

wierd realy it blew out the exact same pins on the chip on mine and every other case i have looked at, im suprised they hadnt done a recall on these drives and save people a lot of data loss, oh well that life i guess, but it makes me wonder what would have happened if i had left the pc downloading over night.

 

sammorris,

The power supply in question is a 450 watt unit that came with his case. If it only had 60% efficiency then only 270 watts would be available for use. 50% would mean only 250 watts.

I don't know how much wattage the old socket 754s draw but I'm willing to bet at least 90 watts. They were notorious for getting very warm stock. Add the overclock without enough watts available to support the increase in performance and Poof! Throw in the factor of an older tech MB and it's not a very good combination. Just the capacitor breakdown, which would be stressed by the OC and it's got premature failure written all over it. I'm betting on the PS being the cause, just like mine. Look at what it hurt in mine! Whether it hurt the MB or other components permanently is a good question. If it did then the PS won't really help without a new MB. A lot depends on how old the board is. Not when it was bought, but when it was made. Sitting on a dealers shelf for a year or more won't increase it's lifespan! In a sense, it's no longer brand new as it won't last as long as a fresh recently manufactured one, even if the design was the same.

Clock On,
theone :>}

 

Russ, I was under the impression that the rated wattage was DC, so a 450W 60% unit should give 450W DC, but draw 750W at the mains. Perhaps I was wrong?

ck5134: The same pins have blown because it's probably the same fault. If it was just the same chip that caught fire, it's likely the same part of the circuit was the cause, and hence the same pins were blown off. A few people I've spoken to reckon that Maxtor drives are no worse than any other. Perhaps they're right, but I just seem to hear too many scare stories, and that was before I read this. Perhaps it's just because they're cheaper than other drives, everybody buys a lot of them. I wonder if there's a reason why they're cheap?

 

Yeh cheap n nasty, mind you i think i had a warning of this fault a few weeks before as it lost all the file tables and none of the data could be retrieved.

saying that the diamond max 8 in my daughters pc has lasted well, very quite ect , but only 40 gig, that ones been going for a good few years in a few pc's never an issue.

 

sammorris,

It's always been my understanding that it's the output efficiency. It wouldn't make any difference what it drew from the mains. Most 500 watt power supplies draw 10 amps on a 120v main, or 1200 watts. The wattage is the same for 230v as well because the amps would be right at half or 5 amps. I'm pretty sure that it's the ability of the PS to deliver the goods!

BTW, this is what I will be sending you, minus the pot and knob!



I got the particulars on the post and it should only be a small amount and can go in a padded mailer!

Best Regards,
Russ :>}

 

ck5134,
I've used Diamond Max 8s and 9s for years without one single failure. I wouldn't buy a Maxtor sata on a bet though. Seagate will straighten them out as they own Maxtor now! I think stories you hear about this drive and that are mostly rubbish anyway. It all seems to boil down to whether you did the job right to begin with. All I heard about the Seagate sata 160s is how noisy they were. I've got 2 of them in two different computers and you can't hear either of them. If you pull the side cover you can barely hear anything no whine or nothing. You can only hear the drive un-park the heads and that's it. You have to listen real hard to hear that and that's on a very quiet computer! I don't make a habit of running my computer with the side cover off! LOL!!

Clock ON,
theone :>}

 

Ok first off I get the missing .dll file as well!!! Which is good and bad. But after I hard reset my PC about 2 times the .dll message goes away and everything load as normal. I'll show my Everest results along side with what ASUS PC Probe is reporting.

First I have 2 HDD's I use all the time.

1. Western Digital Caviar WD2000B 7200RPM 200GB
2. Western Digital Caviar WD800? 7200RPM 80GB

Number one works flawlessy. But ever since I added number 2, it shuts down randomly no matter what. Funny thing, my firefox addons configuration files got corrupted and are now lost. I used CHKDSK yet it found nothing wrong which surprised me.

Now for voltages:

ASUS PC Probe:
12V = 11.968~12.032V
5V = 5.026V
3.3V = 3.216~3.232V
VCore = 1.47V

Everest Home (let's hope it installs before my PC gets restarts):
12V =
5V =
3.3V =
VCore = 1.550V

Can't find the rest.

It's all stock speed and default values in the BIOS. Keep in mind that this started coming up after I OC'ed; I'd never gotten this error in any PC.

Also my board is a K8V-X obviously from ASUS. The 3.3V looks suspicious against the rest. Then again I have no idea what it powers.

And a yearning question that I've wanted answered for so long. When I got my CD/DVD-+RAM Drive, cd's and dvd's loaded at an expected speed when I loaded a Windows setup from CD or something other. After I kept adding more parts the CD reading got slow. Do you think it isn't getting enough voltage? Or could it not be a voltage problem.