Overclocking issue - motherboard?

Hello everyone,

Spec:
Core2Duo E8500 @ 3.16ghz
8Ghz of OCZ Reaper PC2 9200
Asus P5Q PRO Turbo
Palit GTX260 Sonic Overclocked
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

I was running a stable overclock on this system of 4Ghz.

After about of month of use I had about 2 BSOD's in a week where in the log there was 3 critical errors in a row both times.


Then about a week later Windows updates and as soon as they finished installing my machine BSOD'd and wouldn't boot with the overclock on it would get to "Starting Windows" and not do the orbs.



I took the clock off got in fine.

My machine wouldn't post at all with my 4ghz clock then I rolled it back to stock and used the machine for a few days before going back to it.

Started trying to work my way up to 4ghz after changing volts to NB I got it to post with the clock on but with no matter what size clock it would get stuck at "Starting Windows..." so I tried safe mode and that gets stuck at
Classpnp.sys

I took the clock off tried to get into safe mode and it gets stuck on Classpnp.sys (but I can get into normal windows lol)

Last night I took all my ram out but one stick and got it into windows with 4ghz overclock long storey short, any sticks of my OCZ in any memory bank works as long as I don't put all 8gb so 6gb was in.

Last night 4ghz overclock 6gb of RAM, stability tested it seemed fine, CPU went a few degree's hotter than usual played battlefield till 2 in the morning then tried to change my background and the PC froze.

I just switched it off and went to bed.

This morning the board reset the BIOS for me and now with the clock on and 6gb of my ram it locks up trying to log in.

Have I damaged the board do we think? Or bad install with the O/s as I seem to have a fair few things crash.
Skype, Firefox sometimes crashes and closes it self with it's own debugging thing quiet alot.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Board is only about 2 month old as well so may have to RMA it or something if it's buggered lol

CaptainQwerty.

 

From what u r telling me here, your timing could be out, which is what is causing your crashes and what not. Try a fresh re-install, then re-install all your drivers. after that go into you bios and set everything back to stock (which should be in you manuals.) if this does not help then you might have damaged your board.

 

Well I would find the limits of the ram and the CPU separately ,to do this drop the memory divider down to completely take the ram out of the equation drop your CPU clock down to say 3.5ghz then slowly start upping the clock and run your preferred stability software and burn in software,find the exact limit of the CPU with everything else being equal idealy you want three or four overclocks that won't work,one that won't go into windows,one that crashes after a while,one that shows errors and a stable one,this will tell you exactly where the limit is.

Then do the same with the ram,I believe your CPU is multiplier down unlocked?Drop the multiplier down to take the CPU out of the equation set your ram divider back to 1:1 and up the FSB,running memory stability checks after every increase,you can do this multiple times with different arrangements of ram to see if you have a bad stick,find and mark down the limits of the ram in each scenario.

It takes time but its the only way to be sure if its the mem or CPU,if the ram and CPU over clocks fail predictably ie you can see the limit of the over clock coming and are stable your ok,if you still get random crashes at clocks that should be stable or were stable before then yes you may have pushed something too far.

EDIT Sorry for the late reply

 

Sorry didn't say, turns out I was having an issue with my BIOS, I flashed it again and put the clock back and all is well