Possible cause to overclock instability?

I had my Phenom II x6 1045T overclocked for few months, stable and at great temperatures (48c). Last few months I haven't had the overclock set, but have moved my components to another case ready to start a mod project on my actual chassis.

Since then I have also bought an SSD and an extra hard drive (Samsung HDD) so total of 3 storage media present. I have also attached this chassis' USB and head phone headers.

Since my CPU is locked my overclock settings are bus only, so I am wondering could a hard drive cause instability?


Errors - BSOD (pointing to USB.sys USBHUB.sys) and immediate reboot (no errors). It isn't heat related because the max it hits is 48c (same as before). I also use exactly the same hardware. There are no errors within Prime, I also used OCCT. 4 Hours in and the system reboot (instant).


I am wondering if a new SSD and hard drive could cause this as such, since I now have 3 drives occupying the SATA ports instead of one.

CPU is under a year old.



Sure an OC is no big deal, but the performance boost I had with it is worth investigating :)

Yes, but USB drivers and controllers are funk anyway so try different ones. Most cases/motherboards I've had have had some kind of issue with the ports - if you're not using the chasis ports then unplug the headers.

Mike, by you've upped the fsb and I presume got the ram multiplayer under control but have you dialed back the HT-link to about 2k? May be worth a look if you haven't. I'm habit out on terminology re PIIs. The CPU-NB may be worth looking at although data seems to be connected to the SB.

Removed USB drivers and let Windows default have a go. Also reinstalled the SATA controllers just in case.

RAMs fine, so is the HT link and CPU/NB. I have them close to 2000mhz now and also juiced up the voltage a bit, so ideally it should be OK with that.

Will post back if this overclock seems stable. Lowered FSB from 296 to 293 now as my board fluctuates a bit, not sure if the extra hard drives are putting a little bit of pressure on the southbridge. Well I assume its that just because the overclock was fine before that.


I used to have a cache drive and hard drive attached and it was fine, so not sure.

Seems like maybe having an extra hard drive attached was causing the fuss. Maybe. I am also using a generic SATA cable which I always found in the past to cause a lot more trouble with random errors so I will keep an eye on it, hopefully it's just a dodgy SATA cable causing some odd issues.

And also I found out what was causing my BSODs, wasn't a USB driver, it was my old friend, good old Creative Sound Blaster with their latest and greatest Windows 8 drivers that AutoUpdater installed, they do not work for me. How I love Creative :innocent: