Great post rrplay! 

So the best test that I could ascertain with using OCCT was the 'Power Supply' test. It runs Linpack (CPU) and also OCCT GPU test at the same time.

I downloaded it and then ran the power supply test for an hour right away, and it said that I passed the test. No scores were given, but it made graphs to look at.

I guess this is good for a mildly OC'd (3212.2MHz)Phenom II X2-545 Calisto CPU (3000.0 MHz)

Hi neil, looks like your system is running just fine with that overclock if you passed the test.  I suggest to anyone trying to overclock that they run a test like this to be sure the system is stable for every day use. 

Personally I use intel burn test most of the time now due to the fact that it tends to stress the system harder thus increasing the heat.  if someone really wants to be sure about the stability of their system i would run prime 95 for eight hours or overnight.

Intel burn test is what I've always used in the past. This PC passed it too. I'm gonna slap it up a couple of notches to see what happens tomorrow. I'll get back to let yousn's know how it goes.

"OC Baby!"

Good luck with the overclock neil! 

We had a power outage here this morning only for about 8 seconds but it shutdown my machine and wiped out all my bios settings.  I am lucky as i am very familiar with my board it's settings and how my hardware likes to run so about 8 minutes later i had it overclocked again  to 4.0 and with the warmer weather coming will likely leave it there. 

I have 2 old Domino ALC units from CooliT sitting here and I am thinking of using the pump/block from my H50 and modding the 3 rads to cool my CPU?  I'll let ya know if I go ahead with that or not. 

Keep us posted neil!

I am going to be getting an updated CPU air cooling solution that should arrive about Tues or Wednesday So &  I will be updating my OC later in the week as well.looking forward to it .

Neil let us know how it goes with the OC  and temps ...   in the CM Sniper case ?  looking forward to that.

just wanted to share a bit more about the Options Tab in OCCT for safe operating temps ..

# Example if you have it set for 100 C you will likely get no errors ! and definitely shorten the life of your CPU !

I may have seen either in HH or somewhere else ?? ...someone running in the upper 80's C which is a bit high

setting the option in OCCT to 80C some users may experience errors and need to re-evaluate...

so maybe some feedback  about what can be expected as to what  safe operating temps with an OC is ,as well  as what other members are experiencing and sharing.     .just a thought and possibly edit my above post mentioning this in the OCCT Linpack to reflect this.

as well as the Disclaimer that we are referring to desktops not laptops

What's great about this thread as that 4hams mentioned is that even after the mini-blackout he had his rig humming again in a short amount of time..Others are likely to do the same.4hams buddy if you go along with that 3 rads mod & H50 pump/block it would be great to share some pics

I have occasional mini-blackouts  [electrical]  & since I have my pc in the basement so it has cooler ambient temp in the warmer weather as well.

Didn't do it.

The Tsunami situation was a grinder for me because my youngest son lives 50 yards from the beach in Santa Barbara, and his phone didn't work when I tried to call him and wake him up.

I had no way to contact him and didn't know how strong the wave would be when it got there. It turned out to be no so bad, but I spent most of the morning freaked out.

Today, I'm just going mellow and doing nothing. (glad he's OK)

it shutdown my machine and wiped out all my bios settings

My ASRock boards all have a BIOS feature that saves your settings with the name of your choice to allow you to recover from just such a situation. One click restore is a cool way to do it. You can save 4 different configurations too.

Hi neil, my ASUS board allows me to save bios profiles also but everything was gone...  much like the battery was pooched had to reset everything including date and time... 

Running just fine at the moment. 

Glad to hear your son is ok! 

HWare Monitor  is a nifty  little monitoring app for mobo, cpu temps fans, etc either 32 or  64 bit works great & free .. info and download here for your convenience

HWMonitor http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html 

What is HWMonitor ?

'HWMonitor is a hardware monitoring program that reads PC systems main health sensors : voltages, temperatures, fans speed.
The program handles the most common sensor chips, like ITE® IT87 series, most Winbond® ICs, and others. In addition, it can read modern CPUs on-die core thermal sensors, as well has hard drives temperature via S.M.A.R.T, and video card GPU temperature.

Special hardware monitors such as abit® uGuru and Gigabyte® ODIN™ power supplies serie are supported too.
The HWMonitor's PC health monitoring engine is available for customized use through the CPUID System Monitoring Development Kit, a professional SDK built for the Microsoft Windows operating systems.''

Might be just the littleapp to monitor mobo -cpu  temps similar to Everest  AIDA  works great and free .

What's all this talk about stress testing? lol Just use it til it breaks, that's your test lol

I've always used Speedfan for monitoring temps... or I just pop the side panel off my case and see what the mobo says lol (my evga board displays the temp on the POST readout)

Speedfan is pretty good tho, been around for a long time and it also check S.M.A.R.T. errors too(hard drive stuffs)

I ran my CPU overclocked for a while... but I backed it off to stock speeds because I didn't notice any in-game/in application performance difference(other than the number shown at the end of a benchmark) so I'd rather run it at the stock speeds for longevity :-)

thanks for sharing acarzt

a little updated info regarding a familiar app whether you decide to OC or not
 
Memtest86 3.5b Release - Works with up to 64Gb of memory (19/Mar/2011)

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html

ISO's include a boot menu that allows selection of version 3.5b and version 3.4.Version 3.5b includes a number of fixes from the 4.0 release that corrects all of the know issues with testing more than 4 GB of memory.

Memtest86 is a standalone program that does not require or use any operating system for execution. The version of Windows or Linux being used is irrelevant for execution. However, you must use Windows or Linux to create a bootable CD, Floppy or USB key. The Windows and Linux packages are identical except for the installation methods. Memtest86 supports 64 bit CPUs.

 
Memtest86 Version 4.0 beta 3 Release

http://www.memtest86.com/beta40.html

"At last! The 4.0 release of Memtest86 is available. Version 4.0 includes SMP support for concurrent memory testing with all CPUs. Version 4.0 is a major re-write and has been in beta test since 5-Mar-2011 with few reported problems. The official release will be available early April 2011"
Enhancements in v4.0 beta 5-Mar-2011

    Support for testing with multiple CPUs. All tests except for #11 (Bit Fade) have been multi-threaded. A maximum of 16 CPUs will be used for testing.
    CPU detection has been completely re-written to use the brand ID string rather than the [censored]bersome, difficult to maintain and often out of date CPUID family information. All new processors will now be correctly identified without requiring code support.
    All code related to controller identification, PCI and DMI has been removed. This may be a controversial decision and was not made lightly. The following are justifications for the decision:
    1. Controller identification has nothing to do with actual testing of memory, the core purpose of Memtest86.
    2. This code needed to be updated with every new chipset. With the ever growing number of chipsets it is not possible to keep up with the changes. The result is that new chipsets were more often than not reported in-correctly. In the authors opinion incorrect information is worse than no information.
    3. Probing for chipset information carries the risk of making the program crash.
    4. The amount of code involved with controller identification was quite large, making support more difficult.
    Removing this code also had the unfortunate effect of removing reporting of correctable ECC errors. The code to support ECC was hopelessly intertwined the controller identification code. A fresh, streamlined implementation of ECC reporting is planned for a future release.
    A surprising number of conditions existed that potentially cause problems when testing more than 4 GB of memory. Most if not all of these conditions have been identified and corrected.
    A number of cases were corrected where not all of memory was being tested. For most tests the last word of each test block was not tested. In addition an error in the paging code was fixed that omitted from testing the last 256 bytes of each block above 2 GB.
    The information display has been simplified and a number of details that were not relevant to testing were removed.
    Memory speed measurement has been parallelized for more accurate reporting for multi channel memory controllers.
    This is a major re-write of the Memtest86 with a large number of minor bug-fixes and substantial cleanup and re-organization of the code.

 

** If the improvements gained can alleviate checking mem sticks individually great ! the new version 3.5b does seems to take a bit less time overall.

so where again do i get cpu_Z and gpu_Z? lol even though there is little reason for me to post my minimal laptop power on here im still curious :)

so where again do i get cpu_Z and gpu_Z? lol even though there is little reason for me to post my minimal laptop power on here im still curious :)

thanks for sharing DSchieve the info for CPU-Z is a bit earlier in this thread 

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html 

http://www.techpowerup.c...owerUp_GPU-Z_v0.5.2.html 
Updated: Mar 21, 2011 .. you can easily use the 0.5.1 version as well

http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/t/54045.aspx 

combined with monitoring your temps & checking stability you may find them quite useful for alleviating problems at a later time.

as well as prolonging the life of your laptop >> a basic net book cooler may be just the ticket

 take your time if you are not all that  sure about running Prime95 or other stress burn- in utilities  & posting your CPU-Z GPU-Z CoreTemps  screenshots which is useful all around

..it's not about 'minimal desktop or laptop HP" ..

it's more about making the most of what's available to you  maintaining it & what you use.[:)]

Memtest86 is a great diagnostic tool and stress test tool.

Be aware tho, that certain AMD chipsets will spit back hundreds of errors at location 00000000x00 (or something like that, all 0's, maybe an x) This is a false positive. You can ignore that error. If it is any other location, you've got a problem.

I like to use download.com for downloading ANYTHING.

They have a great search function and the downloads can be trusted(you're a lot less likely to get a virus from this site) plus they give site and user reviews on software.

Memtest86 is a great diagnostic tool and stress test tool.

Be aware tho, that certain AMD chipsets will spit back hundreds of errors at location 00000000x00 (or something like that, all 0's, maybe an x) This is a false positive. You can ignore that error. If it is any other location, you've got a problem.

I like to use download.com for downloading ANYTHING.

They have a great search function and the downloads can be trusted(you're a lot less likely to get a virus from this site) plus they give site and user reviews on software.

 hey acarzt thanks for sharing about the AMD's with Memtest I wonder if that still persistes in the neweer releases of Memtest 3.6b or 4.0 do you know?

http://download.cnet.com/windows/   for downloading.

 & ** Should add another:

  Disclaimer: Always be sure to check that you are receiving absolutely clean malware free downloads Note that you should be in the good  habit of scanning your downloads with a reliable Anitvirus Anti Malware Application

something like that ..in the meantime the postal service just delivered a Antec [Asetek] Kuhler H20 620 and look forward to having a bit of fun with that  been using a rather inexpensive  

http://www.newegg.com/Pr...spx?Item=N82E16835226029 

which works a whole lot better than the Intel stock cooler with a bit of fan modding pretty good for about 17.00  & with an additional fan aka 'push pull' in the Silverstone mini-ax SG07 ..will post some results a bit later when comfortable with the OC  temps and stability.