Blackops being fickle

[negev]

Does the Blackops have some kind of 'breakin' period?

I had a nice 3.2ghz oc with my Q9450 stable for 8 hours of p95 using stock everything except 1.275v vid. I then tried upping slightly to push for 3.33 but it kept locking, went back as i ran out of time and found my original settings for 3.2 were no longer stable. Kept getting lockups and eventually had to push the nb up to 1.41v (bios) to get it stable.

Is this normal? Only thing I can think is that the board needed time to settle, or my original p95 run was a fluke...

[RAYTTK]

I dont know about breaking in period but i have had the same issues as yourself, Im using Q9450 aswell, i tried taking the chip up slowly over a couple of days and the best prime stable i got was 3.33 so run at that for a couple of weeks rock solid gaming and encoding, then i get the bug to start to fiddle again, dont have any joy but then it takes ages to get stable at 3.33 again and i couldnt use the same volts as before

[negev]

Yeah it's definitely fickle, last night I benched for 8+ hours at 3.2ghz with 1.2875vid, 1.4v nb everything else stock and it was solid.

Tonight I tried pushing up to 3.32 (415 x 8), tried for hours with all different settings and just kept getting lockups. Eventually gave up and decided to go back to 3.2 until I get water, and it locked up after a couple of hours.

I've just raised the nb and vcore again, and bumped the vtt up one point from stock, hopefully that will keep it stable.

I'm pretty sure it's the board thats fickle as mine nearly always hardlocks rather than giving p95 errors. In fact, in all the oc'ing ive done with this board, i haven't seen a single p95 error at all. I guess maybe it was designed for water as a minimum, so it's more tuned to high voltages..

[negev]

What voltages do you use to hit 3.32 out of interest?

I think I tried 1.33vcore (bios), 1.34vtt, 1.56v nb, everything else stock but i just kept getting lockups. I think the nb wants more volts, but I only have the fan on it at the moment so i dont feel comfortable with more than 1.5v really and I'm not really wanting to push the vtt higher than 1.34 as Ive heard the horror stories about degradation, and based on the above results it seems that either the board or the cpu is already degrading and ive only had it a week.

[RAYTTK]

hello, my vcore is 1.3 actual to get 3.33 everything else just one position above stock, i have tried pushing volts up high for big clocks but have had no success, last night i spent about 5 hours with 1.4 333 memory strap pushing my ram up eventually i had my 1333 ocz platinum at 1600mhz at 1.9v, 8,9,9,23 1T, cpu at 3.2 1.3vcore, very happy with that prime stable, got up this morning and it bsod within 5 min so ive gone back to 3.33, ram tight timmings 1-3.2 @1333 seems to be my sweet spot. i think my ram is holding me back as anything over 3.4 is unstable no matter what volts i try. by the way when you get water you may want to invest in a delrin northbridge top from chilledpc, i just ordered one for £7.99

[negev]

cool thanks - bought :)