Best Practices for memory overclocking. - Overclock.net

jph1589 · 03-23-08

I suppose it could be argued that this is more of a rant than information and if the mods decide that, then so be it.

One of the things that I notice being done or not being done depending on how you look at it, is memory testing during overclocking (prior to operating system booting).

The words prior to operating system booting were the important ones in case there was any question.

Without a doubt, if you boot your operating system with unstable memory, whether it be frequency or timings, you will corrupt your operating systen and your data without fail (as in no way to repair it with a reinstall).

There are many conversations about running orthos and occt and other testing programs once you have the OS running. But as sure as I am sitting here, it is too late then if your memory overclock it unstable. Those things test a cpu overclock and the combination of how it affects the rest of your system, but they do not keep you from being bitten by the corruption that will occur if you boot your machine and the memory is on the edge of being unstable.

I'm not sure why there is no importance put on this in a forum with so many who know about overclocking? But that needs to change. So all you folks who have written stickies or whatever you call them, need to incorporate this into them.

Download memtest86 ISO and burn it onto a CD. I am fairly sure you can find it in the download section of this forum. Go get it and figure out how to burn it and boot it and make sure it works. Then the next time you overclock your memory more than 10 percent or any time you change your memory timings(yes ANYTIME), boot memtest86 and let it run for 15 minutes. If your memory is unstable enough to cause problems, it will error in the first 10 minutes.

Others please feel free to add your thoughts. Maybe this will help reduce the number of frantic people when they corrupt their operating systems.

Blameless · 03-23-08

I use a memtest86+ floppy, not a CD, but yes, some way to make sure that your memory isn't totaly flaky before entering windows is a must.

For a reasonably quick test, I let memtest86 finish one standard loop, then I do 10 loops of test #5.

I've often changed and tested memory timings and FSB speed from within windows (using clockgen, or SetFSB, and A64 tweaker, or MemSet). Occasionally settings I try will be massively unstable and the system will reboot, bluescreen, or lock. Normally this is pretty safe, as nothing is being written to the drive at the time (unless you are doing other things while testing a possibly flaky oc, which is bad). However, if you have write caching enabled, or are running a RAID, it is quite possible to corrupt a drive even if nothing else is going on at the time. I learned this the hardway just a few days ago.

pbpenguins412 · 03-25-08

JPH,

Great guide, appreciate it. I have always run Memtest86 on new sticks, but now I will start checking my memory before I even load the OS.

Thanks again.

Perry · 03-26-08

MemTest running from a CD has always been a must after every frequency/timing change, even if it's just a few passes simply to avoid the inconvenience of having to reformat. It usually takes about 4 hours for me to get things set back up to exactly how I like it although I'm thinking of creating an image and keeping it as a back up but that's not the point.

I'm with you.