Won't Overclock At All

[Baez]

So I've been trying everything to overclock my E8500 but it just won't without encountering the weirdest problem. It boots fine from the overclock it's after that I encounter the problem. First time I thought my harddrive was dying.

Apparently it isn't. It kept crashing and getting blue screens when it was around 3.5GHz. Thought that was pretty odd considering I was still at 32C load and 1.25v. RAM is at a low speed too. Went back into Windows and it said it was my harddrive. Next time I reboot the comp won't go further than POST and freezes at detecting 1 of my drives. The drive that Windows said was crashing.

Makes sense up to this point. Get a new drive right? Well it isn't my drive. The second I lowered the clock back to stock no blue screens or harddrive problems. The drive is detected everytime. As soon as I try to up it again, the drive fails to be detected...

Can someone please tell me WTF is going on?

 

[Antec-User]

I'm new to this, but your Vcore seems a bit low.. -THat 1.25v is ur Vcore or DDR?

Other than that, I'll let a real pro handle this one..

 

[Baez]

I'm a very experienced overclocker too. I've tried setting all voltages at different settings. 1.25v is fine for 3.5GHz with an E8500. But thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Antec-User]

^ ok.. no biggie.. No harm no foul..

oh, I just tried messing with my DRAM freq, and it wouldn't load the OS.. Maybe it's along those lines.. Went from 800 to 1067, IIRC.. Running 1066 ram..

 

[nderscore]

When I am overclocking, I pump up the voltage to see if I can even make a certain point. With E8500s I usually give it 1.3875 V and that should hit 4.0GHz. After that I lower the voltage until it becomes unstable and reset to the previous stable voltage.

 

[hikaricloud]

That's just weird. Maybe the HDD is on it's way out and when you put extra strain on the mobo, it has problems reading? I wouldn't know what else would be the problem...

 

[Baez]

Nex thing I can think of is to clone my drive and use the new one. It's even more annoying because it's the drive with my OS's on it. So when it fails I can't do anything.

 

[Baez]

Alright I have the new drive cloned and am running from it as I type this. Let's see if this does the trick. God I hope it does...

 

[philbar71]

you have the biostar i45 right? the timings are in spec right? what ram? you might have gotten a crappy chip. what were the blue screen's?

 

[Baez]

Yeah I'm on the Biostar i45. I'm up to 3.8GHz and so far so good . May have been the hard drive after all. Have to wait and see if I get anymore nice BSODs. The blue screens before were all hard drive related but only when the CPU was overclocked.

Anyway my specs are:

Core 2 E8500
Biostar i45
G.Skill 1066 @ 5-5-5-15
GeForce GTX 260