Issues with a new QX6850 CPU

Hey all.

I just recently bought a brand new Intel QX6850 Core 2 Extreme CPU (3.0 ghz quad core) and for some reason the system keeps randomly rebooting itself at different intervals for no apparent reason.

I installed the CPU correctly, on a tile floor, after discharging any possible static electricity, added a thin layer of new thermal grease to the CPU before attaching the fan/heatsink and attached the power for the fan. Everything works fine. When I boot up the system and try to install windows however, this is where the problems start happening. The system seems to run fine as long as I'm in the initial windows install screen where you can create or delete partitions, but as soon as it gets to the point of restarting to continue the installation, the system starts randomly rebooting itself. I thought it might be my copy of XP that was borked, so I borrowed my room mate's disc and that didn't make a difference. I'm not sure if the CPU is resetting due to overheating or what, but it seems completely random.

The motherboard is an EVGA 680i motherboard and my power supply is a 600watt Silverstone.

The only thing I can think of that MIGHT be causing a problem is that I accidentally touched the bottom of the CPU with my thumb while putting it in the motherboard, but I hardly think it was enough to leave a print and even if it was, would that cause these problems?

Geforce 8800gts 320mb, 4GB OCZ Platinum PC2 6400 Ram and a SB Audigy SE. Didn't think it was really relevant.

I'm trying to figure out how to flash my motherboard right now but I'm not having much luck. Never flashed a bios before.

u said that it restarts while installing windows. Im pretty sure it does that a couple times during the first installation.

Your thumb could have every well left oils on the contacts. But one thing comes to mind here as I had a similar problem with my wifes 750i board, Windows install would loop fail due to a SATA dvd drive, the stupidass board didnt have the proper mediashield encoding or whatever. If you are using a SATA disk drive, try using an IDE one.

FalconzFan, thanks for the idea, but I'm not that much of a noob It was restarting at random intervals when it wasn't supposed to and screwing up the install.

I had to download the BIOS update for the motherboard on another computer and burn a CD and that solved the problem. For anyone else experiencing similar problems, I suggest you flash your bios. For me it was as simple as visiting evga's website, downloading an iso, burning it with nero and then rebooting and the program ran automatically. Just be sure to power off the computer and unplug it for a minute once the flash finishes and NOT let the program restart your comp like it asks to. Apparently restarting without a full power down can screw up your system.