neybis

Hello all, I'm new here and I'm hoping you guys can help me out. I have an old rig:

AMD x2 4200+ stock 2.2ghz
S1283 Dark Knight
Asus a8n-sli premium
OCZ 2gb (2x 1GB)
XFX 7800gtx
Antec 902

I was attempting an overclock following some guides and did the following. Loosened my timings as loose as they would go, dropped the ram down to 333mhz from 400. Pushed all of the voltages as high as they could go (CPU 1.5v, RAM 3v). Dropped the HT multi down to 3 and put the cpu at 10.5x . I got my CPU overclocked all the way up to 2.8 ghz 12 hours prime blended stable with 44 degree load temps on CPU, 33 on chipset.

i proceeded to lower my ram timings and this is where i get confused.

i lowered the ram timings one at a time testing 12h prime in between each setting. After getting all of my timings as low as they could go i was 12h prime blended stable. i ran some benchmarks (superPi, 3dmark05), everything worked fine except PCMark05 would not load. froze every time. my buddy told me that he runs the prime heat test so i figured why not, just make sure its stable right? well it failed after like 45 minutes.

So i mess around for a while and even go as far as reverting ALL of my ram timings back to as loose as they could but prime heat still failed in under an hour. So i figure well it should at least pass the blended right? it passed earlier with the exact same settings (i keep a journal). WRONG. what is going on here? i thought i had a sweet overclock at 2.8 but not my hopes and dreams are being washed away! lol so i put all of my voltages back to stock settings (vcore at 1.36) and am starting over from scratch for the time being (im really bored ) Right now its 2.5ghz stable at 1.36v and 2.6 at 1.42v 12h prime heat and blended.

Is there a way for me to get back up to my 2.8ghz overclock or did i ruin my cpu?

D3TH.GRUNT

i dont think you ruined your cpu, if you were pushing a lot of voltage thru it then maybe, but just overclock a little at a time and always make sure your ram is stable firstly so you dont prevent future overclocks causing bsods and crashes.

neybis

any ideas as to why it passed 12h prime95 tests then but now wont pass even after lowering RAM timings etc.??

__________________
AMD64 X2 4200+ 2.2ghz @ 2.6
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
OCZ PC3200 2GB (2x 1GB)
XFX 7800GTX
Xigmatek Dark Knight
Antec ninehundred two

Zensou

I suggest you set everything to stock. Run Memtest on RAM, i errors..test each individual stick to find the faulty ram..or it could be your motherboard. If successful, overclock ram to desired stable settings. Then you can start oc'ing ram and stress testing it with IBT and Prime95.