You know you can run Prime95 / OCCT for an extremelly long time and not hit any bumps in the road, I've done it before, but the moment you run LinX a few times it can hit an error rather quickly! You sit back in your chair wondering, what happened?<br />

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<a href="http://www.youwatched.com/datajay/linx-setup.exe" target="_blank">Download LinX Directly Here</a><br />

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It's no small wonder why many people recommend LinX, because it stresses the living hell out of your CPU / RAM / & Main Board, and the added stress will tell you if something is wrong...<br />

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I use LinX for more than just stressing my CPU to check temps though, because if you know what your looking at, you will be able to tell if it's 100% stable or not! Though, keep in mind, temps are very important, and if you are running too hot, you will never stabilize your overclock, so keep temps below 70c if you can, the cooler the better!<br />

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Run LinX 10 times (always use the same Amount of RAM, I use 2048 MB) and see if your Time & GFlops are very consistent?<br />

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While testing, all of your times in each completed run should be within .3 - 1.0 Seconds, if you get 47 seconds for one time and 49 seconds for another time, then your overclock needs some more tweaking! (Keep in mind that you should NOT be moving your mouse or running programs while testing!)<br />

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Same goes for GFlops, if you get 50 GFlops on one test run (of 10) and the next shows up at 48 or 52 GFlops, then you are not 100% stable & optimized. If it's just one time out of ten that it happens it may not be a big deal, the main thing we look at is, that it's consistent across multiple runs of at least 10 runs, though, if you can hit stable across say 30 runs, then you will be even more certain that your overclock is 100% stabe!<br />

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When you have it correct all your times and GFlops will be very close to one another, and this is the best indication that you have a great & smooth running overclocked computer! When you have everything correct your computer should run like a beast! You will feel the difference the overclock makes, for you have found your sweet spot! <img src="/images/smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0" alt="" title="Big Grin" class="inlineimg" /><br />

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What most people do though, which is a mistake, is they go straight to overclock the CPU & RAM, by turning up the BCLK, then they turn up the voltage, and try to find stability this way, the problem is, it's MUCH HARDER to find it this way! Because you don't know where you settings are wrong, and because you have multiple things changed, it's hard to isolate where the problem is..<br />

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In my next post I'll be talking about stabilizing your overclock by following a precise method of isolation of components to ensure you aren't fighting multiple wrong settings and twisting your armchair off in the process to obtain a stable overclock..