Overclocking Problem, Please help :(

[Frozenbeef]

Hey, i overclocked my cpu (e8400) from 3.00ghz to 3.6 ghz and it's wonderfull...the computer has low temps, no crashes , no freezes, no sudden shutdown, increased fps however i have also experienced a problem....

When i turn on the computer for the first time in the monring, it doesn't bleep and just shows a black screen on the monitor so i have to restart it by holding the power button in and then starting it up again...i need to do this 2-3 times in the morning and then it works ok again....

If i need to restart the computer later in the day it turns on normally however if i leave the computer turned off for like an hour and then turn it on i get the same problem...

I'm new to overclocking so here are some pics of the bios settings (sorry about quality) from before and after the overclock. All i did to overclock was to change the FSB - Memory Clock Mode to linked and then slowly increased the "FSB (QDR), Mhz" while restarting the computer to make sure it worked.

I didn't change anything else so maybe the problem is memory timings or because of the linked clock mode or because of voltages?

I would appreciate any help thankyou



Before

http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/5972/img0863bv.jpg
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/7688/img0864uw.jpg
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/6150/img0866jm.jpg

After

http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/1874/img0895rg.jpg
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/6958/img0898e.jpg
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/8977/img0899fo.jpg

[Deleted]

I had the same symptom's as you describe after unlocking a Phenom 555 after a long search i discovered i needed to reset cmos and flash my bios to default then after i got it up and running updated my bios back to latest and it never happened again. I dont overclock so i may be a country mile wide of the mark here but the symptoms as i said are the same.

[Cilraaz]

The first thing I would do is check your voltage specifications on your memory, CPU, and motherboard components. Leaving voltages set to "auto" is a good way to have something overvolt and get damaged.

[denominator]

The first thing I would do is check your voltage specifications on your memory, CPU, and motherboard components. Leaving voltages set to "auto" is a good way to have something overvolt and get damaged.

Or undervolt and leave you in a loop.

[Cilraaz]

Or undervolt and leave you in a loop.

Usually motherboards will overestimate the amount of voltage needed, rather than underestimate.

[denominator]

Just saying it's possible :P

[Shyzhi]

I know this has nothing to do with overclocking your CPU but, When my PC use to boot funny like yours (black screen a few times) i didnt know what it was but i did some fiddling and found one of my ram sticks was dead, Check your ram (take one out and go with 1 stick then try another and so on) and try eliminate the ram issue. i took my broken stick out and my PC boots 100% fine now.

I just took a look through your screenys agian, And when i was planning to OC my E8400 i watched lots of videos and did alot of reading, And most unlinked there CPU from ram and set all the timings to what the ram is ment to be (says on side)

[Bluedevil21]

Check voltage levels, & don't be afraid to give it some juice if needed. Use OCCT / Prime 95 for 6-12+ hours to be considered stable!

[Frozenbeef]

Ok i looked at the voltages and they were rather high compared to before overclocking

Before overclocking

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8916/beforea.jpg


After overclocking

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/90/afteruk.jpg


so i changed the cpu core voltage to a lower setting and i am now running prime54 to see if it is ok.

I will update you tommorrow if the problem has been fixed or not.

Thank you all for all the help so far.

[Deleted]

Well, in my case I was forced to give it more voltage or the system bluescreened me to death when I booted, and if I give it lower voltage than it requires to boot, it doesn't even post.

[Frozenbeef]

Ok i've tried low voltages and it just boots then goes to a blue screen and i've tried high voltages and it just increases the temp but i still have the booting problem so i guess it's not the voltages?

I left the ram as linked maybe that's the problem? Should i unlink the ram frequency and leave it as default?

[Plasmon]

...
When I turn on the computer for the first time in the morning, it doesn't bleep and just shows a black screen on the monitor so i have to restart it by holding the power button in and then starting it up again...i need to do this 2-3 times in the morning and then it works ok again....

If i need to restart the computer later in the day it turns on normally however if i leave the computer turned off for like an hour and then turn it on i get the same problem...

I think some of the responses were too quick to assume they know for sure where the problem originated. You kind of led them in that direction of thought by mentioning over-clocking and that you are new at it so it was natural for people to jump on that idea. I think you should broaden the set of possible problems to more than just over-clocking. It's easy to test though, if you can set up custom profiles in your BIOS; save the current OC'd settings as one profile, then reset the BIOS to default settings and see if the problem goes away. If it still happens then over-clocking is definitely not the cause.

If your monitor is staying black and not reacting at all to a power-on for the first few attempts, you should definitely be wondering if your video card is the source of the problem. (in addition to questioning the over-clocking)

Here's a fairly long story about my experience with similar symptoms and with the problem being the video card:
I had a similar situation for a few months in the summer and the problem was my video card. The problem didn't occur upon rebooting, but every time I had my computer off and needed to turn it on it would take a few tries. In the first 2-5 attempts the monitor would not react at all and remained asleep while my motherboard spit out beep codes, the same sounds every time. While the beep codes were too fast to really identify clearly how many short and long pulses there were, it looked like it might be the VGA error beep codes and I think the lights on my motherboard would stop at the place where VGA is supposed to load. After a few tries restarting it would eventually work and visuals would turn on normally. Throughout these times I saw that my video card temps were ridiculously high, even for the card which was known to be one hot little bastard, the BFG 6800GT OC. The thing would idle in windows doing nothing at over 80ºC and a few seconds after I would start anything that required graphics, like even some little piddly windows game, it would shoot up to 100-110ºC and even loading WoW for a couple minutes it would be reaching over 120ºC. I only used WoW for a few minutes of daily auction house farming at the time and I'd alt-tab out every few minute for a little bit and the temp would start to drop about 10-30ºC and then back into the game for a few minutes. Oh, and this is with a house fan blowing a whole bunch of air directly onto the side of the case. I'm pretty sure the problem was a slowly degrading connection between the heat sink and the GPU because it just seemed to get hotter and hotter over time, but opening it up to check would have voided my warranty so I didn't go that far. One day I went in to clean off the dust and just removed the top metal plate housing so I could get access to the fan and the fins, but after that I think it finally died permanently because I could never get the computer to go beyond those VGA error beep codes and the monitor would not turn on anymore no matter how many tried. I finally went out and bought a cheap replacement, an XFX Radeon HD 4650, and it's worked perfectly fine ever since, with the GPU idling around 45ºC and at max loading the temp is never higher than around 66ºC.

Summary:
Your graphics card could be slowly dying, and while this may not be the problem, don't automatically assume the problem must be with your overclocking. It could be, but you don't have enough information to narrow it down to that yet. The problem of having to try a few times upon power-on to get your computer to communicate with your monitor is exactly the same problem that I had when my graphics card was being a jerk off and not chilling out. It finally died, and replacing it fixed the problem and it has never happened since.

[Frozenbeef]

Humm ok, i shall reset my bios to default and see if it still has problems. if it does then i know its video card ty :P

[Frozenbeef]

Reset bios and it works fine so it is indeed a problem with the overclock/ bios settings...