So, I built myself a new PC through the Black Friday sales and all has been (relatively) fine up until tonight. About 2-3 weeks ago when I started overclocking my CPU (FX 8320 on a Hyper 212 EVO) I pushed it to 4.2 GHz, but found it unstable through Prime 95 and then got a BSOD. I backed it down to 4.0 GHz and that fixed the instability (Prime for 6+ hours and no fails), but within a week I began getting page file corrupt BSOD's at random times and could never replicate them to find out if it was conflicting programs or not.
Tonight, I was using a web browser, playing a game, listening to music, etc just fine for a few hours and then stepped away. Upon returning after ~3 hours, I found that a windows update had occurred and everything went to crap. I got 2 page file corrupt BSOD's and Chrome deciding to crash every time I loaded any other program on my machine due to it "running out of memory" in an hour time span leading me to do a disk check and memory check, both came back negative for errors, I ran another disk check through command prompt which found corrupt windows OS files (things like task manager would load, but were not recognized as Microsoft files or simply did not work anymore). I tried running a system refresh which was successful in wasting about an hour of my life and did nothing more than delete lots of my files so I chose to punt and do a fresh install of Windows.
Lol. As if that should work. I have nothing but my OS and Malwarebytes on this HDD (I know, but I cant afford a decent SSD yet, I'm working on it) and malwarebytes cant even update itself due to a corrupt source file which I just downloaded from their site -_-. To make things even better, I got another BSOD due to a Memory error. I can't install most things due to "the downloaded file being incomplete or corrupt" so wooo.
I guess where I am going with this is what is failing so I can get it replaced? Everything in my case short of the CD drive I used for the Windows reinstall and a wireless card I reused from my old system as a backup incase the hardline fails is still under a year old and covered under warranty.
Perhaps your VRM on the motherboard are not sufficient. What motherboard do you have?
Also Prime95 has a tendency of pushing extra volts when its not really needed. It basically simulates the worst case scenario as far as stressing the CPU. AIDA64 is a pretty good burn in program for CPU.
I'm using a Gigabyte 970A-3DP rev. 1. I haven't touched the voltages on anything, so Prime would be the only thing that would have forced a higher voltage than stock. How can I test any of this to see if it is the VRMs other than just getting them to send me a replacement board?
Just download AIDA 64 free from their website. Also the VRM on that board is a 4 + 1. An 8+2 is usually recommended as the bare minimum. Either you need to buy a new more reliable board for overclocking or simply back off on the clock.
Thanks for all the information. I'm getting a replacement board that has an 8+2 VRM by next week. Sucks to be down but glad that I didn't lose anything other than the board.
When you overclock voltages would have been left at AUTO - meaning it will pump more voltage than required for the given overclock. With the board being insufficient for the processor to begin with once the cpu goes under load for a heavy stress test like prime95 it will wreak havoc to your board. Hence it damaged your motherboard in the process.
For 125w FX chips a decent board is essential, only on the latest 95w (8320E) chips would one consider anything less.
Yea, replacing the board is a smart move since yours is rather old... unfortunately most of the sales on AMD3+ boards generally are on older chipsets and board without great vregs.
Also, I have an 8320 that I can run stable at 4.7 ghz on a 212 Evo with ASUS 990X Pro mobo. It runs games fine, runs windows fine, everything fine. Except Prime95. That literally smokes my cpu. I'm talking swings of 25-30c in a minute or two. Doesn't happen with AIDA64 or other benchmarks so it seems it's pulling too much volts for my cpu, but Prime did these things with Haswell chips because of the different voltage regulation that haswell did.
I'm looking at getting either of these two boards. Is there a recommendation on one that is more reliable and or easier to get stable overclocks on? Plus having at least some kind of onboard fan control for something more than just CPU and rear exhaust would be nice.
I unfortunately can't afford anything nicer than one of these for the foreseeable future, so if one of these is not reliable or has some other issue and you know of one in the sub $200 range that would work, please let me know. My only requirement is that it doesn't look like some of those horrible blue monstrosities that are floating around as my case does have a window and I can't hide the ugly thing.
I'm leaning toward the Sabertooth, but seeing if I can scrounge up the extra money for the Crosshair V Formula Z. It's not too much more than the Sabertooth and I like the way that the ROG products usually have lots of handy features.