BIOS O.C. Profile causing BSOD

[beepbeep]

Hi folks,

I apologise in advance if this doesn't quite make sense!

I have a 3 year old "3XS Carbon (updated Sept 2011)" rig which has been brill... When originally purchased, it was running on an OC profile that had been created by Scan/3XS staff.
Recently, this profile has been causing frequent BSODs requiring me to simply load the standard BIOS profile - which keeps the system stable.

In terms of troubleshooting what is causing the BSOD all of a sudden in the OC profile, where should I start - there are a lot of settings there and wouldn't really know where to begin! I realise this could be a bit of a stab in the dark, but any help would be gratefully appreciated!!

Thanks!

[watercooled]

How extreme was the overclock?

Especially when subjected to higher voltages, CPUs can degrade over time so once-stable overclocks become unstable. If that's the case, there might not be a whole lot you can do about it; adding more voltage (with associated risks) or reducing the clock slightly might help in the short-term.

[peterb]

Could be overheating if the air intakes have accumulated dust, or a fan might have stopped working causing an overheat. So I'd check that first.

But as watercooled says, overlocking is operating outside the manufacturers parameters and may well cause damage to the components over time.

[beepbeep]

Hi guys,

Sorry for the delay in replying - Christmas got in the way - unfortunately, no PC upgrades were in my stocking this year :-/

peterb, I regularly clean out dust etc. from system so pretty confident it isn't related to that, so I think its as watercooled has stated, which is conclusion I had come to also - my overclock was fairly modest. It's a i7-1600k 3.4Ghz processor which has been o/c to 4.7Ghz (but only switches to 4.7 if/when the CPU is placed under load...

Given the age of the processor now, would you still say that's the most likely culprit ... I've not attempted o/c before myself so will be an interesting challenge adjusting these variables in the bios :-)

[watercooled]

What is your Vcore set to?

[beepbeep]

CPU Voltage set to 'Manual' and is set at 1.415 (although the (I assume) ever-changing realtime voltage next to it states 1.424V)

[watercooled]

Now I'm not an experienced Sandy Bridge overclocker but that's quite high; I think ~1.35v is considered a safer 24/7 max.

I'd be tempted to turn down the voltage a touch, of course after turning down the multiplier to compensate. Then, as if overclocking again, turn up the multiplier step by step with stability tests in between until it fails, then back off a step on the multiplier, or two if you want to err on the side of caution.

Beware though, if you turn down the voltage too much without dropping the multiplier to compensate, the system could become so unstable it's unable to load BIOS, forcing a CMOS reset, which would OFC lose all previous settings.

If all you're after is stability, and the OC isn't all that important, you could always just load stock settings. And just as an aside in case you're not already aware, setting wrong values in BIOS can lead to component destruction, so only proceed if you're confident.

[beepbeep]

Thanks guys - I've decided to switch between my standard/OC profiles in BIOS a lot more, depending on what I want to do, rather than leave it on my OC profile the whole time