system stability issues. need advice
test_tube_tony
Dallas TX Member
heres what ive got....
used evga 780i triple sli mobo, (not ftw version) with bios p08
used e8400 cpu E0 stepping (stock speed)
used evga 9800 GTX
new corsair tx750 psu
new 4x 2 gig g.skill ddr2 1100 clocked at 1066 (8 gig kit)
mem and fsb are linked with a 5:4 devider
the system ran great for the first almost week. trouble started (or at least noticed) after updating the bios. tried reverting back with no luck so i dont think the flash was the real issue. system runs fine for about an hour and crashes with fah running. tried prime95 and it ran an hour before both instances reported failures with in 6 minutes of eachother. have run memtest for 2 passes and it says good. going to run a full 24 hour memtest this weekend tho and see what happens. so im thinkin either mobo or cpu. unfortunately tho, i dont have any hardware that i can test the cpu in. i was wondering if anyone else can suggest anything that i can try? is it wishful thinking that prime failures for sure mean bad cpu? i just dont have a lot of money to sink into this. thanks.
used evga 780i triple sli mobo, (not ftw version) with bios p08
used e8400 cpu E0 stepping (stock speed)
used evga 9800 GTX
new corsair tx750 psu
new 4x 2 gig g.skill ddr2 1100 clocked at 1066 (8 gig kit)
mem and fsb are linked with a 5:4 devider
the system ran great for the first almost week. trouble started (or at least noticed) after updating the bios. tried reverting back with no luck so i dont think the flash was the real issue. system runs fine for about an hour and crashes with fah running. tried prime95 and it ran an hour before both instances reported failures with in 6 minutes of eachother. have run memtest for 2 passes and it says good. going to run a full 24 hour memtest this weekend tho and see what happens. so im thinkin either mobo or cpu. unfortunately tho, i dont have any hardware that i can test the cpu in. i was wondering if anyone else can suggest anything that i can try? is it wishful thinking that prime failures for sure mean bad cpu? i just dont have a lot of money to sink into this. thanks.
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Comments
Btw, memtest doesn't stress north bridge stability as much as prime95 blend does. It can appear stable in memtest and still fail in windows, because prime95 blend mode makes the CPU and RAM work hard, and pass lots of data through the NB. Memtest86+ just sends commands to the RAM.
If removing 4GB of your RAM makes it stable, you have two choices... you can either choose to stay with 4GB, or you can choose to put the other 4GB back in and try removing the divider. I can't provide any empirical evidence (but I'm sure Thrax will back me up here), but using a divider to run your RAM faster offers little to no performance gain on any Core 2-based platform. You'd probably find it more valuable to run 8GB 1:1 than to run 4GB 5:4.
Good luck