SWTOR Damaged My i7 2600K

True enough, but the fact that the OP fried his own rig doesn't mean the game's engine doesn't have trouble. I even tried running single GPU and dropping all clocks to stock, and it made no difference as far as quality of life. My clocks don't cause any of my issues, all my benches and stresses are still fine, no issues with any other games. Ilum, however, is a craptacular slideshow.

Actually I'm a PC repair shop owner and I've been involved in the PC industry for many years.

been able to reliably overclock my processor to 4.5GHz with absolutely no stability issues whatsoever.

My system was solid as a rock for at least six months prior

Hmm.. I've been waiting and waiting on a new rig and thought I had decided but now dethman got me thinking again.. maybe I don't need to spend $2400... there seems to be a sweet spot between low and high end rigs that balance fps vs. crashing, etc... I primarly want to do Ilum and Warzones. Any suggestions please private message me...

I've come to the conclusion that this game is literally dangerous to run on a gaming PC.

I know that can sound hard to believe for some, but let me explain.

To begin, here are my system specs:

Intel Core i7 2600K
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro heatsink/fan
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard
16GB Mushkin Blackline 2133MHz DDR3
2 x EVGA GTX460 1GB in SLI
Crucial M4 128GB SATA3 SSD 6Gb/s
WD Raptor Enterprise 10K RPM SATA3 3Gb/s
Creative XFi Platinum
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Cooler Master HAF932 Gaming Tower
Cooler Master 850W 80Plus Certified PSU
etc.

This is obviously a fairly powerful gaming rig and I built it and maintain it meticulously; actually I'm a PC repair shop owner and I've been involved in the PC industry for many years. I've been an avid gamer since the early 1980's.

I normally do not buy into conspiracy theories nor do I allow my opinion about games to be swayed by anything but my own experiences. But my experiences with this game have convinced me there's something seriously, seriously wrong with it.

I can actually get SWTOR to run quite well on my system. I can maintain 60FPS almost everywhere outside, running at maximum details at 1920x1200 resolution with all quality-improving options in the Forceware control panel enabled. The game plays wonderfully and I have no problem with it as a game itself. I run into frustrating chugging when indoors, curiously fluctuating very rapidly between 59 and 60FPS. This occurs when I'm near walls, inside caves or corridors, inside my ship, etc.

I've done many things and attempted many tweaks to try to alleviate that, but eventually I gave up. I realized that I could just temporarily disable VSync in-game when in those situations to have my framerate shoot up to the high 90's and even 100's which results again in liquid-smooth gameplay. Once back outside, reenable and go along my merry way.

So what's my problem?

I have, previously before playing SWTOR, been able to reliably overclock my processor to 4.5GHz with absolutely no stability issues whatsoever. My system was solid as a rock for at least six months prior, through many hours of maxed out and heavily tweaked Skyrim, through playing Battlefield 3, through RAGE, etc. My system was so stable I could leave it sitting in any one of those games, video cards also healthily overclocked, and not have a single worry.

Lately, however, I've started getting BSOD's in SWTOR. They started getting more and more frequent. I began to worry. The bluescreens even started occurring outside of SWTOR, like when running 3DMark11 or even while just browsing the internet! It should be noted that while playing SWTOR, especially with VSync disabled, my system fans speeds would definitely shoot up, with GPU temps often approaching 80C. This is okay for short gameplay sessions, but definitely not okay for hours on end.

This evening, I was finally able to restabilize my system, now at 4.4GHz, which isn't much to give up, but when you consider that I had to do so simply after a couple of weeks of playing a MMORPG that has such (comparitively) simplistic graphics, it's quite disturbing. I honestly believe that had I not been running a somewhat bullet-proof system, the damage may have been worse. I now need to keep a very careful watch on my rig to make sure everything else is okay.

A word of warning to you all: If this game is pushing your system to its limits, you should ask yourself if it's worth it to risk its reliability in the long term. I have canceled my account, deleted my credit card info from this website, and will be washing my hands of the whole thing. I probably won't be buying another BioWare game ever again, due merely to spite over this.

Good luck. You may want to consider getting out while you can.

BioWare, thanks a lot. You suck.

Posts like the OP make me laugh, for example:



Okay, first impressions, a professional, he must know what he's talking about...



Mmmm a 3.4ghz processor running at 4.5ghz for....



Now you clearly state that it's SW:TOR that has caused your issues? Is it not possible that your motherboard or a component of your severely over clocked system is starting to breakdown after 6 months of abuse?

Emo Rage Quitting So Called PC Professionals.. you make me chuckle!

I've come to the conclusion that this game is literally dangerous to run on a gaming PC.

I know that can sound hard to believe for some, but let me explain.

To begin, here are my system specs:

Intel Core i7 2600K
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro heatsink/fan
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard
16GB Mushkin Blackline 2133MHz DDR3
2 x EVGA GTX460 1GB in SLI
Crucial M4 128GB SATA3 SSD 6Gb/s
WD Raptor Enterprise 10K RPM SATA3 3Gb/s
Creative XFi Platinum
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Cooler Master HAF932 Gaming Tower
Cooler Master 850W 80Plus Certified PSU
etc.

This is obviously a fairly powerful gaming rig and I built it and maintain it meticulously; actually I'm a PC repair shop owner and I've been involved in the PC industry for many years. I've been an avid gamer since the early 1980's.

I normally do not buy into conspiracy theories nor do I allow my opinion about games to be swayed by anything but my own experiences. But my experiences with this game have convinced me there's something seriously, seriously wrong with it.

I can actually get SWTOR to run quite well on my system. I can maintain 60FPS almost everywhere outside, running at maximum details at 1920x1200 resolution with all quality-improving options in the Forceware control panel enabled. The game plays wonderfully and I have no problem with it as a game itself. I run into frustrating chugging when indoors, curiously fluctuating very rapidly between 59 and 60FPS. This occurs when I'm near walls, inside caves or corridors, inside my ship, etc.

I've done many things and attempted many tweaks to try to alleviate that, but eventually I gave up. I realized that I could just temporarily disable VSync in-game when in those situations to have my framerate shoot up to the high 90's and even 100's which results again in liquid-smooth gameplay. Once back outside, reenable and go along my merry way.

So what's my problem?

I have, previously before playing SWTOR, been able to reliably overclock my processor to 4.5GHz with absolutely no stability issues whatsoever. My system was solid as a rock for at least six months prior, through many hours of maxed out and heavily tweaked Skyrim, through playing Battlefield 3, through RAGE, etc. My system was so stable I could leave it sitting in any one of those games, video cards also healthily overclocked, and not have a single worry.

Lately, however, I've started getting BSOD's in SWTOR. They started getting more and more frequent. I began to worry. The bluescreens even started occurring outside of SWTOR, like when running 3DMark11 or even while just browsing the internet! It should be noted that while playing SWTOR, especially with VSync disabled, my system fans speeds would definitely shoot up, with GPU temps often approaching 80C. This is okay for short gameplay sessions, but definitely not okay for hours on end.

This evening, I was finally able to restabilize my system, now at 4.4GHz, which isn't much to give up, but when you consider that I had to do so simply after a couple of weeks of playing a MMORPG that has such (comparitively) simplistic graphics, it's quite disturbing. I honestly believe that had I not been running a somewhat bullet-proof system, the damage may have been worse. I now need to keep a very careful watch on my rig to make sure everything else is okay.

A word of warning to you all: If this game is pushing your system to its limits, you should ask yourself if it's worth it to risk its reliability in the long term. I have canceled my account, deleted my credit card info from this website, and will be washing my hands of the whole thing. I probably won't be buying another BioWare game ever again, due merely to spite over this.

Good luck. You may want to consider getting out while you can.

BioWare, thanks a lot. You suck.

True enough, but the fact that the OP fried his own rig doesn't mean the game's engine doesn't have trouble. I even tried running single GPU and dropping all clocks to stock, and it made no difference as far as quality of life. My clocks don't cause any of my issues, all my benches and stresses are still fine, no issues with any other games. Ilum, however, is a craptacular slideshow.

As an experienced overclocking enthusiast, I can say with assurance that the problem here is pilot error.

Ilum is on the Devs radar and is a SERVER side issue .. they have already said they are figuring out how many people the instance can handle before the performance issues occur for PVP(power lag, players warping..etc)

Once they figure that bit out they are going to adjust the player population cap needed before 2nd/3rd/4th instances of Ilum spawn.

So yeah, that one wont be fixed untill server side optimisations are done (mixed PVE/PVP instance specific)