Motherboard problem?

[sgt bombulous]

Hello!

I recently build a system for my Cousin, who does 3D modeling (CS5, REVIT, Sketchup, Autocad etc...) I immediately overclocked the RAM to 1600, but left the CPU alone. When he received it initially it worked great for over a month. I put a Thermaltake CLP0556 cooler on it at first, but later decided to upgrade to a Cooler master Hyper 212+ to do some overclocking. When I initially tried it, I got the Multiplier to only 36, from the base of 33, to take it in Baby Steps. It was going ok until I tried to get it to 37... Then it started getting squirly and said something about the voltages having changed. I eventually got it working at 36, and going stable. Then a few days later when my cousin got it home he was working on it and it crashed. Issued a BEEP and then just died. The following night he was able to get it started and again it gave him a warning message about the voltage having changed, but then worked without issue.

I feel compelled to make very clear that at NO point did I ever adjust voltages of anything. There would be no reason to with such a tame overclock. Could the motherboard just be faulty? I'd rather replace it when I know there's a potential problem than wait for it to get worse or fail and then have to track the problem down. Any thoughts?


System:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3
CPU: Intel i5-2500k
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8 GB (4 x 2) 1600 MHz, DDR3
GPU: EVGA GTX-460 01G-P3-1371-AR
Power Supply: Corsair TX650, 650W
DVD Drive: LITE-ON IHAS424-98 R
OS: Windows 7 Pro x64
Power Supply: Corsair TX650

 

[o1die]

You can't expect boards to work flawlessly when overclocking. I would start over and reduce the ram speed before increasing the cpu fsb. This provides a more stable overclock. I drop my 1600 ram to 1333 and increase my amd cpu fsb from 200 to 240 so the net ram speed is 1600. I can run these settings with almost any recent amd cpu. I let the motherboard select the timings; never had much luck changing the timings manually.

 

[sgt bombulous]

You can't increase the CPU BCLK on Sandy Bridge boards. You get a choice of RAM multipliers (8, 10.66, 13.3, 16, 18.66 and 2133), and the BCLK is stuck at 100. I did reduce the RAM to 1333 so we can hope for stability and maybe replace the board and try again.

On my system:

Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D - Pro
CPU: Intel i5-750
RAM: Corsair XMS3-1600 8GB
GPU: EVGA GTX-570 SC

Etc...

I have the BCLK at 160 and RAM at 1600, and it's been stable for a year. I guess sometimes we just get unlucky.