Overclocking vs stability

[Sverre]

Intel 5960x
Rampage V Extreme

I can easily OC my CPU to 45/44 with AI Suite II, but it will constantly crash on Prime95. I have to reduce it to 40 before Prime95 gets stable (24 hour test). My RAM (Corsair Dominator Platinum 3200) is stable at 3200, according to Prime95. No matter what stress test I use, except Prime95, it shows that the CPU is stable at 45/44. I can OC it to 46 if I up the core voltage to 1.35v and maybe even furter if I did some research in OC'ing, but it's too much of a hassle. With Prime95 the CPU will run at 85C to 105C, but the water (with Aida64 CPU, RAM and GPU) doesn't get seriously hot (35'ish) if I keep the room temp at 25C or lower.

My questions is: reading the forums about Prime95 and OC'ing, crashing in Prime95 shows that your CPU isn't able to run at that speed and that you will corrupt the data on your PC, over time. I would think that Windows (10 64 pro) had some safeguards built in to check that what it saved was correct, so that that statement would be void, is that correct, or will I have to downclock it to 4GHz?

[Arne_Saknussemm]

If I were you I would forget P95 for stability testing and use RealBench. Much better stress test, since it stresses all subsystems of the PC. It is also kinder to your CPU on current load and temps.

The premise and supposition in your question are both false. Key point is an OC that is not stable is not worth anything at all... better run stock.

OCing Cache is next to worthless...running 44 cache probably takes quite a bit of voltage to be rock stable and brings zero performance gain in anything but synthetic benchmarks. I run 40 just for the hell of it...but really stock would be fine.

Concentrate on a stable RAM OC and stable Core OC ....4.4GHz is often the sweet spot for these CPUs around 1.2v