I purchased a Cooler Master 212 EVO back in March and overclocked my 2500k to 4.5 GHz shortly after receiving it. Everything was running perfectly fine throughout stress tests, gaming (which I don't do a lot of), and daily use. Two days ago I was sitting near my PC watching TV and my computer either went to sleep/update install, etc while I wasn't using it and then it got stuck in a boot loop. The computer boots for half a second, then just shuts off and will continuously do this until I kill the power. Tried a few things like pulling the GPU, stick of RAM, etc. I think what did it was pulling the battery on the motherboard which let me boot the PC again because before it wouldn't even post.
Upon booting back up I saw these two messages:
I did see one more screen which I did not get a picture of but it was a post screen I believe which I have never seen before, can't remember.
Now I guess it's pretty obvious what caused the issue but I'm wondering why after 5 months or so with no issues this happened. I'm wondering if I need to tweak the voltage/play with any settings. I believe I had mine set to 1.270 V in the BIOs and temps and stability seemed fine. I have also just upgraded to Windows 10, but I don't think that has anything to do with it considering the PC wouldn't even post.
For now I loaded optimized defaults in the BIOS and have left it there.
Processors like everything else change. Your chip may not be as capable as it was a while back. I'd down lock to 4.2 and run prime for 1-2 days straight.
Overclocking is voodoo, something might have gone fishy somewhere, I doubt it has anything to do with the overclock itself, probably just some settings that got messed up.
Try tuning it back to the same settings once more, and remember to set your XMP to whatever its rated.
Thank you guys for the input. I'll give it another try probably and if I run into the same issues I'll probably knock down the clock speed. Do you think I need more voltage or maybe the chip doesn't like 4.5 GHz anymore?
To clarify with the XMP settings, you're talking about the RAM right? Auto is 1333 MHz but my RAM is 1600 MHz, so "Profile1" in my BIOS sets it to that speed which I have done in the past.
Also do you still recommend that same guide for the OC? Aside from the clock speed and voltage do the other settings really make a difference and do a lot of guides vary on what is changed or are most going to be very similar?
Run it back at stock settings, if you experience issues with that then it could be something more severe. However, after running it on stock for a couple days start over clocking again, but you will more than likely have to increase the voltage from what you used to have it set it. Like @Zippy_Parmesian said, things change over time.
Don't run your ram at AUTO if you can, since it doesn't apply the correct timings and frequency that your sticks is rated for. It only applies a standard timing set and frequency all DDR3 modules should be capable of doing.
You might have to increase the voltage of your CPU, but I'm probably guessing its just something else that got borked.
1.27 shouldn't really be high enough to degrade your CPU after just 5 months.
Might be cpu degradation , http://www.anandtech.com/show/2468/6 after few years you might need to increase voltages to keep same oc or lower oc a bit and to stay within safe margin of voltages
45nm CPUs were more prone to this, but if you kept them cool they could run 1.35 or lower without degradation. People have been running 32nm stuff since release at 1.4v without issues so dunno.
