Very Confusing Problem

[Klub]

Specs:
EVGA 680i
Intel Q6600 Oc'd to 2.8ghz
2x 8800 GT w/Akimbo SLI'd
4gb Patriot Extreme DDR2 800mhz
Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeGamer
2x 150gb Raptors RAID 0
1x 500gb Seagate 7200x16mb
Ultra 1000watt SLI edition
CoolerMaster Aquagate Liquid Cooling
Vista Ultimate 32

Problem:

Recently, I OC'd to 3.01ghz from 2.82 ~ Voltage at 3.01 ghz was 1.37 ~

Temps were 55c max Load, 38c idle.

At 2.82 I was running stock voltages of 1.2 and I never crashed at all.

I was also using Vista 64.

I was having SOME driver issues but, nothing to bitch about.

Unfortunately, a few apps I wanted to use would absolutely not function in 64bit so, I took the dive to Vista Ultimate 32.

At 3.01ghz I started crashing like CRAZY...Any game I tried, sometimes in firefox...the crashes were non-stop.

So, I prime 95'd it, went for 10 hours, perfect...No errors.

Ntune was giving me some major problems so, I tried to uninstall Ntune but, couldn't...So I re-formatted.

Constantly freezing again in ANY graphics intense situation.

So, I swapped the cards, ran 3dmark, perfect 15k, ran them individually, 9k per...

So, I said okay, maybe swapping the cards fixed it...

Ran CoD4 and first game went good, mid-second game...Freeze.

Ran Ram-Tests, every stick has no errors.

Tried Sata drivers...Wasn't Sata.

Today, I underclocked to 2.8ghz and so far I've only crashed 1x in EQ2 ****ing around with the graphics settings...

Anyone have any ideas what it could be?

I unlinked my memory and didn't OC it or play with the voltage after my initial overclock but, I'm really lost as to what could be freezing me.

Memory is stock at 5/5/5/15/2T

Through all 3 overclocks I did leave my ram stock because Patriot timings are 5/5/5...But, could that be the issue?

Thanks.

 

[jsc]

I bought an eVGA 680i motherboard about 18 months ago. Love it - except for the high MCP temps. I was running at 3.6 GHz with an E6600. Testing showed my FSB topped out at 450 Mhz.

A couple of vacations ago, I brought back a G0 Q6600. After several hours of tinkering, the best I could do was 3.0 GHz. Started checking around online and I discovered that, apparently, 680i's have problems with overclocked quad core CPU's.

I'm running the P30 BIOS. I think they are up to P31 now.

I know the problem wasn't the Q6600. I put it into a GA-EP35-DS3P and it's Prime95 stable after 24 hours at 3.6 GHz.

I was able to run at 3.0 GHz at stock CPU voltage, and only had to increase CPU voltage to 1.30 volts to run at 3.3 GHz.

You might try finding a copy of WinXP just to eliminate the possibility of OS problems.