Need expert advice on how bad I f'ed up!

srhadden

Distinguished
Jul 27, 2007
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Hi All,

I just custom-built a new system.

asus p5k ws
Corsair DDR2 1066
Intel 2.4GHz quad core
geforce 8800GTS.

I spent about $2600, which I usually do every couple years.

I don't overclock, nor inteded to, but here is why I needd advice.

After my system was built, installed windows vista 32-bit, all appeared well. I was poking around the BIOS and I accidently set something which casued my graphics card not to be regonized. Since I couldn't see aything, I had to use the jumper block to reset my CMOS/BIOS.

No problem. I thought this would put me back to factory defaults. I've been debugging instability problems for two weeks, going nuts.

I just realized my BIOS was out of date! I was running CPU-Z to check my system, and I noticed that my RAM was running at 889MHz!!!! And it said it was DDR3 RAM! WTF!

After I re-flashed my BIOS, the system wouldn't even boot up because it said the overclock settings werre wrong! So I went back to defaults.

Now my system comes up. CPU-Z shows the RAM running at 400MHz, DDR2, which is what I think is correct. The numbers look way more normal now from what I've been reading online.

What the hell was happening here? I was overclocking my system to the MAX or something with this old BIOS? I'm concerned about the hardware now. What should I do? Run stress tests? Run memtest86 to make sure I didn't fry my memory?

Any advice is greatly apprecitaed :??:
 

alpine_sc

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Jun 25, 2006
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18,680
Well, it never hurts to run a stress test in case you bought a defective part. Better have it die now than when you don't want it to die. But I wouldn't worry about it.