Phenom II x4 965 BE quickly fails in prime95+getting crashes in games

[sbhk1]

1 week ago I got my new computer and installed Windows 7 x64 bit Home Premium.

AMD PHENOM II X4 965 (3.4GHz) - BLACK EDITION - BOX
GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3
G.SKILL 4096MB DDR2 800 CL4-4-4-1 (2X2gb)
FORCE 3D HD5870 1GB GDDR5 - RETAIL
ANTEC THREE HUNDRED w/o PSU
CHIEFTEC A-135 550W
WD 500GB 16MB SATA2 7200 RPM - WD5000AAKS
2 extra case fans

(stock cooling on the cpu and gpu
I did not perform any OC or what so ever.
after installing regular programs (steam, msn, games and monitoring programs like cpu-z, hw monitor, gigabyte mother board driver etc..) I have experiences crashes in games after few minutes of playing (from 5 minutes to about 50). The computer just freezes and I see a black screen, but sometimes I see diagonal lines. I have searched abit on that problem and saw that many people get it with the same gpu (ati 5870) so I thought it's just a driver problem.

Yesterday I ran a windows memory test (no errors) and Prime95.
ran it on 4 torture thread and it quickly failed in the first / second test (max 3 minutes test).
I ran it couple of times while monitoring the temps and in different number of threads and it failed quickly everytime (with 1 thread it failed on the third test).
This is very upsetting .....

windows power saving is turned off but the cpu+gpu drivers power savings are turned on.
The cpu Idle temps are 30~36cº, gpu idle temps are about ~32cº.
In max load while running prime the cpu gets to about 53-56cº.

I do have warranty but I would like to try and see if maybe there's something else not set correctly.

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8110/aaaayw.jpg

 

[Wisecracker]

Undervolt your CPU -0.05v (or -0.025v if you are so inclined) in the BIOS and away you go!

I think that is a great motherboard --- but could have definitely used a (2x4) 8-pin (EPS) CPU power connector.

But then it would have cost more - LOL

 

[keithlm]

Yesterday I ran a windows memory test (no errors) and Prime95.
ran it on 4 torture thread and it quickly failed in the first / second test (max 3 minutes test).
I ran it couple of times while monitoring the temps and in different number of threads and it failed quickly everytime (with 1 thread it failed on the third test).
This is very upsetting .....

Just a guess:
Try a 195ns on the tRFC for the memory timings. (It probably defaults to 127.5 which is often too low.)

And it goes without saying that you must set the memory to the correct voltage. Many of the G.Skill DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 memories need more than the 1.8V that most motherboards would set it to as a default. (i.e., 2 of the 5 for that speed on newegg show 2.0-2.1 being the needed voltage.)