Is only the CPU at risk when OCing? Or mb and RAM too?

[jeece]

Is only the CPU at risk when OCing? Or mb and RAM too? - update

Disclaimer: I know, I was careless doing this on air cooling, and I assume the entire responsability of my actions, don't think I'm whinning here, I just want to understand better. And its not a bad thing it happened, I now have a new Athlon XP system. Thanks.

I'd just like to know, because I killed my older computer (dah Duron 850!) when OCing. I don't have spare parts, so I can't test if it's the CPU, mb or RAM that died. I want to build a small server with the remaining parts, but not knowing what I fried, it's hard to know what to buy.

Here's what happened on that dreadfull night:

I began to OC quite smoothly, incrementing the multi at +0.5 intervals from the stock 8.5x, if I remember correctly. All was fine and stable all along, idle temp hadn't rised that much.

At about 10x, my ASUS probe monitoring program began to send voltage warnings. Strange thing though, 'cause I haven't changed any voltage settings in the BIOS. I quickly shut it down. For some reason, when I rebooted in order to tweak down the multi, it refused to boot even the BIOS. The PSU and CPU fans turned, the HD light stayed in steady ON state... but nothing else.

I removed the CPU, and it doesn't look damaged, no burn mark, nothing, except some tiny "bubble marks", kinda circles of somewhat darked color. Maybe it's normal, maybe not.

Click here for closeup pic.

In some way, I'd like to have fried the mobo, I want a microATX one for my server... But in some other way, I'd like to have a "new" T-bird CPU... And I don't have $ for both right now.

Well, all this to know: Is tweaking only the CPU multi is dangerous for the RAM/mb?

Sorry for the lenght, I'm a "detail" sorta guy.

 

[trebor]

As long as you are not tweaking the fsb on your mobo, just tweaking the multi "should" not affect other componets. I say should but,..... As for the circles on your cpu, I have never looked that close in on a cpu before, so i cannot aswer that for you. The most I look for is the obvious, including bent pins.

 

[jeece]

Yup, removed the CMOS battery. Even tried a boot disk... Oh, btw, the OCed computer was running on an A7V133 board .

And thanks for the link, I'm planning of boosting my 2500+ performances in the future.

 

[jeece]

Update:

The Duron CPU is fine. Back from the dead. Don't ask why, I don't even know! I reinstalled it, and yup, it works like a champ. That sucks, since I spent to buy a T-bird before I re-tried my Duron. Bah, that's not that bad, since the new CPU is more than 50% faster... Yay!

So, I don't know what I did this time in order to allow it to boot normally. Of course, I unplugged all hardware, cables, RAM, etc. I reinstalled the CPU with new thermal compound, and removed the CMOS battery for 2-3 days before another attempt (I'm just a "need to be absolutely sure" kinda guy). When it "died", I only removed it for, lets say, not more than 15 minutes I think. I've been told that if the battery is removed for only seconds, it would be reseted. So i think that could be it... But still, even with unstable BIOS settings, I would have been able to at least access the BIOS, right?

Another thing, I added a 256Mb stick o' RAM. BTW, PC133 RAM is FRIKKIN DARN expensive!!! Heck, it cost more than my PC3200 2.5 CL Kingston 256mb sticks!!! I bought some PC133 for half the price it costs now a year ago! Same brand, all! If i'd have known, I would have bought a cratefull last year to resell 'em now... I never thought computer parts could become investments and gain value with time (unless they're antiques).

Anyways... So know I have a Linux system that'll act as a server... soon. When I'll get the hang of Linux anyways. Quite something.