1.6a dying?

[nin_fragile14]

I've been running a 1.6a P4 @ 2.3 ghz for the last 9 months. Recently, I upped the voltage from 1.55 to 1.575 and the CPU to 2.33 ghz. It seemed to work fine for a while, but then began to restart in games. So I clocked it back to 2.3 ghz. Even after scaling back, games were still restarting. Upped the voltage to 1.6 (the max on my motherboard). Still restarted.

Getting flustered, I clocked the FSB down to 133 so it was running at 2.13 ghz @ 1.6 volts. Worked fine for a day, then rebooted during Rise of Nations. Out of desperation, I clocked it at 1.6 (the default), with default voltage (1.5 volts). After 20 minutes of RON, it restarted again. I'm worried that this CPU is dying. I'm running it at 1.575 now, at 1.6 ghz, and if it continues to restart, I'm guessing the CPU is dying.

If it is, I plan on buying a 2500 barton and overclocking that a little bit. However, before I do that, I want to make sure this is my CPU and not my RAM or power supply. Voltage readings seem normal and my PC2700 Samsung has been running stable @ 360 mhz for 9 months. That wouldn't be the part to crap out... or tell me if I'm wrong. Random rebooting is usually due to an overclocked CPU, so I'm assuming that's the problem, and my Northwood is dying.

[nin_fragile14]

Well it's dead. Hooray. Trying to get an old 1 ghz T-bird hooked up and it's having problems. Starts spinning then shuts down after about five seconds. Going to order a Barton tonight...

[Dazz]

Northwood overclock death syndrome, seems that some Northwoods just die no matter how much or how little they are overclocked.

[cvearl]

Overclocking is only recommended if you can afford to pick up a new processor any time you feel like it. In the race for faster processors and video cards, do you not think that if the manufacturer could have run it 2.3 reliably for 3 years that they would have sold it that way???

I know of several dead CPU's and fried motherboards first hand. I stopped overclocking for that reason. I don't have the money to replace stuff every 6 months to a year. Sure many get away with a few years without killing the hardware at high speeds but I need the chip or vid card to last the whole 5 years mainly because I sell my old stuff to friends and family and overclocking gambles that away.

I know someone right now that slightly overclocked an AMD motherboard setup T-Bird processor and a small overclock on a 9700 Pro. One day he smells sonehting a few weeks ago and the computer reboots to a black screen and no beeps or nothing. Just the PSU fan spinning. Looks at the board and there is a small black blast mark on one end of the AGP slot and a little on the edge of the 9700 Pro. Mobo is dead and he was praying his new 9700 Pro was still OK. Buys a new motherboard and gets beep errors. Replaces the CPU and boots finnally. Now he has slight artifacting in dark scenes for some reason. 9700 Pro is now defective. This was the worst case I have ever seen. It cost him several hundred to recover and now his 9700 Pro is no longer perfect. I feel bad for him.

Probably 80% of overcloking will never end up killing the hardware prematurely. But murphys law, I would be in that 20% that need to run to the store for new stuff within the first 12 months of overclocking.

Charles.