Is my Q6600 dying?

[lemonadesoda]

Originally Posted by Mussels

they actually do. I de-IHS'd a lot of my CPU's, and there was always reports of certain CPU's being soldered on. A quick google oughta find you results on it.

Ah, I think we could be stuck in the symantics. I had understood your use of the term "solder" to mean the solder used for mounting electrical components, like CPUs, resistors, capacitors, etc. Both the metal and the material: typical melting point 180-250°c.

Whereas, the IHS thermal attachment method we see on CPUs or other components with IHS, can be using one of two methods:

1./ Adhesive TIM, similar to those heatsinks you see on PCBs that are not attached via clips but "glued" to the chip. The adhesive can soften or indeed melt at higher temperatures.
2./ Indium foil. It is a thin sheet of metal (foil) that is inserted between the die and the IHS and is a low-temperature, controlled thickness material, used for thermal attachment.

However, the point still stands, that if the CPU is so hot as to melt the thermal attachement materials, the temperature is probably high enough to damage the CPU (first) rather than just melting the TAM, reducing the cooling ability, so that overclocks are lower.

I span the google machine and found this: http://www.indium.com/blogs/TIM-Blog...81003,27,2938/ . Lots of interesting reads on the site.

[Geofrancis]

most motherboards wont overclock as far with 4 ram slots filled compered to 2 ram slots filled. so u might have to lower your overclock to use all 8gb of ram u have.

another point is if the chip has been overclocked for that long it might have degraded to the point that you will have to lower the overclock to make it stable.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

symantics.

Semantics + symantec? you got nortons on the brain!

But yeah at least we got the point across. without any way to test what material they actually USE, its a common beliefs that its some form of solder.

[xkm1948]

I got it back to 3.6GHz stable and sound!

I spent several nights tweaking the settings. I finally found out that by lower DRAM to 800 I could make it last a little longer. After turning off some mem related options in BIOS. I finally make it back to 3.6GHz. Crysis full load stable for 24*7.

Well, I will not buy from GSkill any more. At least not there cheap modules.

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by Mussels

not really. they're stupidly expensive.

I went through that whole phase as well, then i thought: F it, i'll run it at stock til i figure out whats stopping my OC. ANd guess what... no games run any slower, that i can notice.

Give it a shot yourself, lower the clocks and see if you actually NOTICE a difference.

I agree . . .

although, the BUS speed itself can make a ton of difference in regards to system throughput . . .


but, the CPU clock itself doesn't make that drastic of a difference in most games, compared to the stock clock setting

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by xkm1948

I got it back to 3.6GHz stable and sound!

I spent several nights tweaking the settings. I finally found out that by lower DRAM to 800 I could make it last a little longer. After turning off some mem related options in BIOS. I finally make it back to 3.6GHz. Crysis full load stable for 24*7.

Well, I will not buy from GSkill any more. At least not there cheap modules.

hmm so yours was ram related? i'll keep that in mind when i clock up again.
(My temps are higher on the new board due to the NB cooler not letting me face the CPU cooler the way i want, running 3GHz atm)

[imperialreign]

another thought to keep in mind - if you've replaced the factory TIM and gone with AS5 or otherwise . . . after a long amount of time, the heat generated from significant OCs will reduce the TIM's ability to effectively transfer heat as well . . . which can drastically reduce the stability of an OC if any of the cores start getting out of hand . . .