Core i7/X58 Overclocking Thread

[dejanh]

I must respectfully disagree; I really appreciate the work you've put into this thread and it's enlightened me quite a bit, but I beg to differ on this one. I think it's important on boards like this to have a certain set of standards regarding when an overclock is considered relatively stable for the purposes of spreading correct information regarding expectations. While I completely agree with your assessment that 24/7 for a month doesn't necessarily equate to stability, I also believe it's important to use the most scientific means at our disposal to render judgment on what may or may not be considered stable. I also agree that having alot of experience overclocking can lead to having a good "gut feel" of stability, but one must remember that alot of folks in this forum (albeit not as much as other forums) are newer and looking for advice. Developing that "gut feel" takes years of practice.

That being said, I would like to recommend to anyone seeking advice that anything in the area of 12 hrs of prime or 6 hrs of LinX goes a long way to "prove" stability.

Comments welcome, but I don't want to hijack this thread; so try not to pay too much attention to me.

On that note, I just got my P6T deluxe/920/6GB OCZ 1600 Plat. Seems to be a great chip, I could hit 3.6Ghz on water at just above stock volts. I'm still learning this platform and will post results when I get anything substantial.

Thanks!

I don't think you are disagreeing with me, and I did not say that we should not have a certain set of standards that determine a stable OC, especially for those that are new to the game. You have to start somewhere and with something. However, over time you evolve an inherent knowledge of "what works and what does not", and I will take that any day over any Prime/Linpack test. The best test for stability is one where you take real world applications and you task them to do the work on the CPU and see if is stable. For example, if you use your machine to fold for 2/3 of the day or more, then use F@H to test your stability, not Prime.

If you look carefully in this thread, there are people that get all bent out of shape here that after 10 hours of running Prime it fails, or worse yet, after like 20 hours it fails. No need to get bent out of shape. At some point in time Prime, Linpack, all stress tests will cause your system to fail. This would be considered "reasonable failure". I heard a good comment some 10 years ago from some (at the time) prominent overclocker that said "run Prime for 20 minutes to 1 hour and you'll likely never see your system fail". I agree that with today's multicore chips things are bound to be a bit different but in essence this has not failed me since, especially when I coupled it with real world tests.

Anyway, to stop the thread from derailing more, let's just get back on topic