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In the rig in my signature, I was running an older Cooler Master RS-550-ACAA-A1 power supply that to date has about 60k+ hours on it and it still works. I originally had it powering my Q6600 overclocked 24x7 for about 45k hours before I upgraded 3+ years ago to my 3570k. I leave my computer on all the time.
Before I upgraded to the 3570k, I was no longer able to keep 3.2Ghz stable on the Q6600, and left it at 3Ghz before I retired it using the same power supply. I thought it was just showing it's age, maybe the mobo is getting tired. When I got my 3570k, I was only able to get 4.2 Ghz stable for about a year, then had to limit myself to 4 Ghz at stock voltage for stability. I just wrote it off that I did not win the CPU O/C lottery, and just a little lazy to think about it any more. At this point, 4Ghz was serving my needs just fine anyhow.
Thread about that here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1824929
I later put the Q6600 on a rig to repurpose for my daughter with a new Antec PSU. Just for grins I put the old settings I had for 3.2Ghz OC, and it was prime stable for days. I never tried 3.6, but who knows..So even as of today she uses with Windows 10 and the rig runs great for her needs, just a little warmer than most current stuff, but then again she only uses it about 8 hours a week for music, homework, etc as she is not a gamer.
All this time, I just did not make the connection to the integrity / quality of my old power supply. It showed stable voltage under load per CPUID on my 3570k, and was still functional so it seemed. I had no trouble overclocking my video card either, and everything was stable even while gaming even though the CPU was only overclocking to 4Ghz. Removing the video card and using the onboard GPU did not help my CPU OC either.
Well, fast forward to today and I finally upgraded my ancient video card (260 core 216) to a 970GTX for my 3570k rig. I needed a power supply with an 8pin and 6pin combo for the GPU (old one only had dual 6 pin GPU connectors). So I had a new old PSU laying around and installed it. This one right here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/01/21/bfg_mx_series_power_supplies_550w_680w/2#.VgXFwvlVhBf
So out of curiousity, I started playing around with overclocking with my 3570k with the new PSU. I tried 4.2 @ 1.185v.. completely stable. Now I am at 4.4Ghz @ 1.265v completely stable for an hour so far. I was never able to get there on my old PSU. I will let this test for 24 hours, and I don't think I am going to try any harder as I like to stay in the volt / temp safe range, but the 10% extra overclock now is a nice gift..even with Speedstep still on.
EDIT: 24 hours stable at 4.4 , I know I can go higher, but I will stay here. So even though my old power supply 'worked' and had 'stable' voltages even under load, things that I could not measure like ripple and noise most likely played a huge impact on my OC capability
Before I upgraded to the 3570k, I was no longer able to keep 3.2Ghz stable on the Q6600, and left it at 3Ghz before I retired it using the same power supply. I thought it was just showing it's age, maybe the mobo is getting tired. When I got my 3570k, I was only able to get 4.2 Ghz stable for about a year, then had to limit myself to 4 Ghz at stock voltage for stability. I just wrote it off that I did not win the CPU O/C lottery, and just a little lazy to think about it any more. At this point, 4Ghz was serving my needs just fine anyhow.
Thread about that here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1824929
I later put the Q6600 on a rig to repurpose for my daughter with a new Antec PSU. Just for grins I put the old settings I had for 3.2Ghz OC, and it was prime stable for days. I never tried 3.6, but who knows..So even as of today she uses with Windows 10 and the rig runs great for her needs, just a little warmer than most current stuff, but then again she only uses it about 8 hours a week for music, homework, etc as she is not a gamer.
All this time, I just did not make the connection to the integrity / quality of my old power supply. It showed stable voltage under load per CPUID on my 3570k, and was still functional so it seemed. I had no trouble overclocking my video card either, and everything was stable even while gaming even though the CPU was only overclocking to 4Ghz. Removing the video card and using the onboard GPU did not help my CPU OC either.
Well, fast forward to today and I finally upgraded my ancient video card (260 core 216) to a 970GTX for my 3570k rig. I needed a power supply with an 8pin and 6pin combo for the GPU (old one only had dual 6 pin GPU connectors). So I had a new old PSU laying around and installed it. This one right here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/01/21/bfg_mx_series_power_supplies_550w_680w/2#.VgXFwvlVhBf
So out of curiousity, I started playing around with overclocking with my 3570k with the new PSU. I tried 4.2 @ 1.185v.. completely stable. Now I am at 4.4Ghz @ 1.265v completely stable for an hour so far. I was never able to get there on my old PSU. I will let this test for 24 hours, and I don't think I am going to try any harder as I like to stay in the volt / temp safe range, but the 10% extra overclock now is a nice gift..even with Speedstep still on.
EDIT: 24 hours stable at 4.4 , I know I can go higher, but I will stay here. So even though my old power supply 'worked' and had 'stable' voltages even under load, things that I could not measure like ripple and noise most likely played a huge impact on my OC capability
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