Overclocking i7 920

[asdfasdfasdf]

Hi, I'm pretty new at overclocking, but I have read a lot of guides and watched several videos as well. I have an i7 920 with Asus P6T (the regular one... not the deluxe or any special editions). I was running prime 95 overnight, and it would crash or restart after 5 hours of testing. I'm just wondering if this means it's stable or not. Some people would run prime95 for HOURS (12-24 hours) and some people would run it for less (eg. 15 minutes of a small little test and then 9 hours of testing after that). My goal is to try and overclock it to 3.5GHz as I would rather not risk my system with 3.8 GHz. I'm just wondering if the crash means the voltages needs to be raised or not. Also, I have 6 Gigs of ram at the moment, and I left out everything as Auto for now in the BIOS except the bus voltage (left that as 1.64v). Currently, I'm testing at 3.3GHz to see if it can get through at least 12 hours. I would also like to add that the highest temp I've seen is 64-65C with Real Temp whenever I run prime95, so the temp does seem safe and all As always, help is appreciated, and thanks in advance!

 

[red1776]

hey asdfasdfasdf,
'stable' is a relative term. there isnt a system out there that is 100% stable. there is no shortage of tutorials on how to OC the i7 as you know, so I would define all of the parameters you have to work with ie voltage and so on.when finding the max vcore watch for when upping the vcore no longer nets any additional advantage, or becomes a case of diminishing returns, and back it off a tenth.The crashes can be caused by any aspect of your system, the memory, vcore, NB, etc. in other words overclocking your memory for example may open up more headroom for your cpu etc.and finding the bottlenecks in the process is the 'trick' in OCing. As far as 'stable' goes, if you hit 5 hours at full load, odds are that it will give you much trouble at all. when i get to the maximum i think the cpu has in it, i stress it for 8-10 hours without a crash or hang, back off 10mhz and call it Stable, this has been very successfful for me as I very rarely have a machine that locks up due to the cpu's version of valve float. just my opinion, but 65c is too high for my taste, i would suggest if you are getting that warm you look at a different cooling for your 920.

 

[asdfasdfasdf]

hey asdfasdfasdf,
'stable' is a relative term. there isnt a system out there that is 100% stable. there is no shortage of tutorials on how to OC the i7 as you know, so I would define all of the parameters you have to work with ie voltage and so on.when finding the max vcore watch for when upping the vcore no longer nets any additional advantage, or becomes a case of diminishing returns, and back it off a tenth.The crashes can be caused by any aspect of your system, the memory, vcore, NB, etc. in other words overclocking your memory for example may open up more headroom for your cpu etc.and finding the bottlenecks in the process is the 'trick' in OCing. As far as 'stable' goes, if you hit 5 hours at full load, odds are that it will give you much trouble at all. when i get to the maximum i think the cpu has in it, i stress it for 8-10 hours without a crash or hang, back off 10mhz and call it Stable, this has been very successfful for me as I very rarely have a machine that locks up due to the cpu's version of valve float. just my opinion, but 65c is too high for my taste, i would suggest if you are getting that warm you look at a different cooling for your 920.

Thanks, red1776! That has been a lot of help to me, and it sure cleared of some things such as the relative term 'stable'!! I managed to o/c it to 3.3ghz for 13 hours and 30 minutes without any problem, so I am confident it's stable. I think I might stick with 3.3GHz for now as it's already high enough for me. 3.5GHz has been a pain to get to, but I will stop for now and be happy with 3.3Ghz. Hopefully in the future, if I attempt to o/c a little higher, I will get to the "stable" point of 3.5GHz without too much of a hassle just like I had earlier. Again, thanks for the reply and the help, and I really appreciate it, red1776!! THANK YOU!!