i've been going nuts trying to get my q9450 to 3.2 on gigabyte x48-ds4. i flashed the bios and that seemed to work for a few days. but after i rebooted after installing new software the oc settings did not post anymore. the system stoped half way and rebooted itself going back to the stock settings then posted. i'm a noob builder and oc'er and i really dont know where to go from here...

q9450 air cooled xigmatek HDT-S1283
gigabyte x48-ds4
gskill ram ddr2 800
corsair psu 750w
asus 4850 crossfire

Lets see here, the number 1 cause of failed OCs. RAM.

Did you make sure to sync the memory with the FSB so that it runs at double its speed? If you didn't, then that could mean that the RAM was over clocked and may have seemed to work, until you did something that used a good amount, and boom!

That would make it revert to stock for a post, provided you didn't save the changes, or select xx to load setup defaults and continue.

Then it could have been the CPU voltage, depending on your VID and such. But 3.2 is a modest OC for that chip. So only possibly.

Did you make sure to disable all spread spectrum options in the Bios, and maybe disable all the power saving stuff like C1E, Speed step, EIST, etc.

And where you go from there depends on where you wanna over clock to. You have some good gear, so it should be pretty east to get up to 3.6 at least. So 3.2, Bah!

With an X 8 multiplier, your 800 Mhz RAM won't be a problem until about 425ish FSB. So that's 3.4 Ghz.

And at that point, you can loosen the timings, add a bit more voltage, or modify other options to get more speed from the RAM.

Good Luck!

--Lupi