Windows 7: Overclock causing system instability?

Running prime 95 for over 5 hours now, everything seems stable. No errors yet. Hope it stays good.

In regards to voltage, 1.25 is good if you have good temps there.

For a nice 24/7 OC, my advice is find a voltage range where you can run IBT/Prime and stay at 70-72ish MAX.
You will never reach these temps in any real world situation, and thats probably going to be around 60-65c at the most for the heaviest real world load. Gaming 50-55c at the most.
Sure, you can go higher. And for heavy OCing thats one thing. But to find a good 24/7 OC this is the envelop I like to stay in.

What I would do is manually set the voltage to 1.25 (or whatever your particular setups comfy spot is).
Use Load Line Calibration, Vdroop OFF or whatever its called on your MOBO.
Leave all of Intells power saving utilities on. EIST etc.

Then start testing. For these quick tests I would use IBt 10 pass Normal. The idea is pass 10 tests (takes just a few minutes) untill you get errors at that voltage. NOT BSODS just errors.
Then, bring the multiplier down a notch and run Prime Overnight. If its stable at 10-12hrs, your good to go.

All CPUs are going to be different. For example my 2700K can run up 4.5ghz with ease. Really doesnt need anything extra to do it either. But at 4.6 it starts wanting more juice. 4.7 is a big jump and from there it just starts getting more and more. I can run it at higher clocks but but power it wants and heat it starts generating just isn't ideal for 24/7 IMHO.
Of course, that also depends on personal preference. Some like to OC for every last mhz of performance without regard for power consumption, heat, or voltage. And thats fine too. Just IMHO, those types of OCs are best for benchmarking not 24/7 use.


Time and patience. You'll find that spot where everything work beautifully together.

Okay thanks for the all the tips going home now to see P95 is still running well
Also when you guys mention max temps, do your mean the highest temp on the hottest core or the highest average of all four?
Also too add, my max temps on prime 95 are pretty high. The second and third core can sometimes reach up to 90 degrees(also usually up to a 10 degree difference between cores). Also different programs seem to read different temperatures on my system. Anything come to mind? I don't think it's my CPU cooler because I just reseated and reapplied thermal paste yesterday. Also the air is being blown directly from the CPU fan into the exhaust fan of my case, so I think the airflow is good. Will high voltages and overclocked simply lead to high temps on air? My idle temps are perfectly reasonable (25-35C)

Yes, higher frequencies and higher voltages= more heat. I would reload factory defaults and use the guide I linked to above to gradually OC your system. With your cooler, I would start with a multiplier of 42 or 43 and first try changing the offset sign to "-" and then type in .005. Exit Saving changes and boot into windows to check your voltage under full load. If it doesn't boot, change the sign to "+" and again, use .005. Hopefully, that will get you an offset voltage of about 1.2-1.25. If it runs that for 30minutes to an hour, you can go back in the BIOS and bump the multiplier up to the next notch(43 or 44)........rinse, repeat.

Overclocking is a process and sometimes you have to start all over to get to where you want to be. Reference my screenshots and the guide beforehand to familiarize yourself with the options, and what they do. I am going to put a guide at the end of this post that will give you more information about the options in an Asus Motherboard's BIOS. We'll get you there, it just takes time.

Kelly

Asus Z77 Tuning Guide.zip

Okay I did some tweaking and now have a stable 4.5GHz overclock with good voltages and temperatures I'd like to thank you two for all the help you've given me, my system should be a lot more stable and hopefully i'll get to enjoy my games a lot more now without all the crashing. Thank you again!!

Glad you got it all figured out and are happy with it. The 3570K @ 4.5GHz should do everything you need it to, with power to spare!

Sounds good.
And yes, heat is the big thing. The CPU may be capable of more, but its very important to maintain good thermals. If thats all in check, and your stable sounds as if you've got a succesful OC.