Prime95 custom fails after 3 hours

[XenatR]

hi guys, im currently trying to overclock my memory and north bridge and test the stability before overclocking processor

my setup:

Phenom 955 BE
Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3
Samsung Green 2x4gb VLP

currently i have
North Bridge at 2611.6Mhz, on 1.32volts NB/CPU and +0.2v NB
Memory at Unganged 669.6Mhz (1333), fsb 3:10, cas 7-7-7-21-28-1T

prime95 custom @ 6000Mb use: Min 2048 - Max 4096 15mins each FFT.. 3 cores failed just after 3hours, with the last carrying on till i stopped it past 4hours

what should i do with this? increase volts? loosen timings? should i accept the 3hours and just go on to oc'ing processor?

my only use with the pc is gaming for a few hours at a time (BF3, SC2), and browsing web

[AMDforME]

If you're just gaming then you are unlikely to see an issue. The dropping of three cores after three hours can be caused by many things. Upping the vcore/CPU NB voltages may or may not help. Looser timings may help. The only means to know is to change the options one at a time and then test again for 3+ hours. It may not be worth the effort if all you do is game.

[Rob94hawk]

Did you run 3DMark? My old socket 775 rig flunks Prime 1 minute into it but will finish 3dmark06. Granted it took me 3 times to get it to finish but it finished nonetheless lol

[XenatR]

If you're just gaming then you are unlikely to see an issue. The dropping of three cores after three hours can be caused by many things. Upping the vcore/CPU NB voltages may or may not help. Looser timings may help. The only means to know is to change the options one at a time and then test again for 3+ hours. It may not be worth the effort if all you do is game.

which variable would you suggest i change first? i am worried that once i start overclocking the cpu, the errors will be more apparent!

Did you run 3DMark? My old socket 775 rig flunks Prime 1 minute into it but will finish 3dmark06. Granted it took me 3 times to get it to finish but it finished nonetheless lol

is 3dmark strenuous? ive passed 3hours of prime custom large fft's

[AMDforME]

Naturally your system is likely to fail P95 once you OC it if it already does so stock.

There are numerous OC'ing guides online for the Phenom II CPUs but I'd start by bumping the vcore a step or two depending on what increments your BIOS allows. As long as the CPU temp doesn't go above 55C you shouldn't experience any issues. Depending on how high you want to try and OC and how much time you want to invest in trial and error testing, once you make vcore changes but you still get errors, then I back up a step on the vcore and go up a couple steps on the CPU-NB voltage.

Don't waste your time with 3DMark as it's not sufficient to stress test a modern PC. P95 and OCCT are the best stress testing software that I have seen IME. Any system that can't pass 24 hours of P95 simply is not 100% stable. As I mentioned above if all you do is play games and surf, 3 hours of P95 will probably be fine.

There are many little tweaks that can improve stability even at the stock CPU/RAM frequencies but they take time to figure out and by time I mean 8 hours a day for weeks when you're running 24 hour P95 stability tests. Most people won't invest that amount of time unless their PC is of a critical nature.

BTW if you don't have the latest mobo BIOS you should install it as it often fixes RAM compatibility and timing issues that are discovered by customers reporting problems.