BSOD or Complete Freeze After ~1 Hour PC Usage

At a bit of a loss as to why my PC is freezing, was hoping people here (who overclock) could offer some guidance!

Up to this point, I've been running my i7 2600K at 4.6Ghz (1.38v) OC'd for 2 years. Last night I was running Vegas Pro 11 overnight to render a project, but when I came back the PC shut itself off overnight.

Since then, my normally-functioning PC has been locking up and freezing after 1 hour of any CPU-intensive activity. Gaming, rendering, anything. How the freeze goes is: first my most CPU-intensive program dies (usually a game), then audio programs, then YouTube videos running in the background, then the taskbar, then the mouse. Then I'm forced to hard reset to use the PC again.

Something especially curious since this problem began was my PC would freeze whenever I booted CPU-Z. It 100% froze my PC, freezing it immediately (or BSODing me) and forcing a hard restart, no matter what speed I set my CPU (even non-OC'd). This only went away after I updated my BIOS. The error I got each time was "A clock interrupt was not received by a secondary processor within the allocated time interval." with error codes.

I decided to restore Windows to before the crash to test if it was a faultry driver or registry causing the problems. Didn't fix the issue.

Since updating my BIOS, I can run CPU-Z without issue and run benchmark tests in prime95 at 4.6Ghz again for ~30 minutes with no instability. OCCT shut down my PC during its first test, but ran for 1 hour straight on a 2nd run.

I've updated everything I can think of, and I'm starting to freak out I might've ruined my memory or CPU. Any idea what might be wrong with my PC, or steps I can take to troubleshoot?

Things I have done:

• Updated the BIOS
• Installed the most up-to-date non-beta graphics drivers
• Ran prime95 and OCCT tests at lower overclock speeds (4.4, 4.2)
• Ran tests at default clock speed (3.4)
• Re-seated my memory sticks
• Aired out the PC, heatsink, fans, etc.
• Re-plugged the power supply connections to every motherboard power connection

Thanks for any guidance. :) Happy to provide logs and memory dumps on request, just let me know what's needed. My PC specs are in my profile.

I have a question because it's very important when overclocking: what's the make and model of your PSU?

Also, when you overclocked 2 years ago, what did you do in order to test your system's stability? I mean, did you run Prime95 for 12-24 hours or anything like that?

TwoCables said:

I have a question because it's very important when overclocking: what's the make and model of your PSU?

Also, when you overclocked 2 years ago, what did you do in order to test your system's stability? I mean, did you run Prime95 for 12-24 hours or anything like that?

Corsair Professional 850W 80 PLUS Gold Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply <- PSU

2 years ago, I ran prime95 for 24 hours, OCCT CPU test for ~8 hours, and maybe another test.

Currently I am 10 minutes into a memtest86+ test, no errors thus far on either memory slot.

Damn, then it's definitely not the PSU. The kind of power that thing delivers is 100% harmless.

Maybe you're seeing a little bit of CPU degradation in which case you might need to increase the core voltage a little. Or, disable HyperThreading.

The whole reason I bought the i7 was for hyper threading. I stream and render videos regularly, so all 8 cores are definitely in use.

What core voltage would you recommend? I tried setting to 1.38v and still crashed. Set to Auto, which usually straddled 1.4v, and still crashed after 1 hour of use. Worried it might indeed be something dead with the hardware.

Did my logs reveal anything?

kur1 said:

The whole reason I bought the i7 was for hyper threading. I stream and render videos regularly, so all 8 cores are definitely in use.

What core voltage would you recommend? I tried setting to 1.38v and still crashed. Set to Auto, which usually straddled 1.4v, and still crashed after 1 hour of use. Worried it might indeed be something dead with the hardware.

Did my logs reveal anything?

Oh, I'm not a log reader.

Yeah, it's hard to ignore how sudden this was. Maybe you're right and it's not degradation but something else, but I don't know what it could be. It's just that when I see problems with an overclocked system, I tend to assume that maybe it's not stable, but maybe you're right that it's something else.

TwoCables said:

kur1 said:

The whole reason I bought the i7 was for hyper threading. I stream and render videos regularly, so all 8 cores are definitely in use.

What core voltage would you recommend? I tried setting to 1.38v and still crashed. Set to Auto, which usually straddled 1.4v, and still crashed after 1 hour of use. Worried it might indeed be something dead with the hardware.

Did my logs reveal anything?

Oh, I'm not a log reader.

Yeah, it's hard to ignore how sudden this was. Maybe you're right and it's not degradation but something else, but I don't know what it could be. It's just that when I see problems with an overclocked system, I tend to assume that maybe it's not stable, but maybe you're right that it's something else.

Well something notable was the problems were still occurring when I reverted CPU speeds to default/factory levels. I can re-confirm after I run the Memtest86 passes. Don't know if that means I trashed a core at some point and its causing lockups, motherboard stuff is failing, memory is faulty, or what...

Memtest86 just completed and had 0 errors. Interesting. So I'd venture it's not the RAM.

Today I idled at the PC login screen (just booted and let it sit), went to get breakfast and get ready, and came back. When I logged in, nothing would load, and it forced a restart. Would this be a Windows issue maybe?

I'm not sure. I'd rather wait to see what someone would say after reading the logs.