Issue with Q6600 locking up

[Copium]

Hi, I've recently been having heat issues with my CPU, idling around 60 and having it shut down at 80 degrees. So I went and got the corsair h60 cooler. After installation, I was back down to 40 at idle and 60 when gaming. After I got home, I played bad company 2 for about an hour then start checking emails and whatnot and the computer completely locks up. I rebooted and it seems to lock up at random, but it always does. Sometimes I can get onto my desktop, sometimes it won't even get past loading windows or even posting.

I'm not exactly sure what the problem could be. At first i thought it was a hdd issue because ibwas getting a solid activity light whenever it froze, but when it locked up in the bios I figured it couldn't be that. I check the voltages and they seemed fine. Here are some of my system specs. Any insight would be appreciated. thanks

CPU: Q6600
MB: P5N-T deluxe
GPU: 560Ti
Ram: 8 gigs DDR2
PSU: TX 750 watt

 

[Copium]

I forgot to mention that I had not experienced the lockup before installing the new cooler.

 

[sportsfanboy]

Sounds like a ram or psu issue,probably ram. Did you set the frequency,voltage and timings manually in bios or are they on auto? If you did set them manually you can try bumping up the north bridge voltage a little, try something like 1.3 and go up slowly from there not exceeding 1.4.

Is the system overclocked?

 

[Copium]

The voltages are set automatically. I'm running a memory diagnostic right now and will report the findings and the voltages once it's done. I have not overclocked anything. I've always seemed to have heat issues from just normal use so I've never had any desire to do so. I'm not sure if this makes sense or not but it seems that the longer I have the machine off, the longer it takes to freeze up after I turn it on again.

Just for informational purposes, the original overheating issue was caused by a not great stock heatsink and dried up thermal grease.

Edit: the memory diagnostic locked up about 62% through. Here are the voltages:

Vcore 1.24
3.3V 3.26
5V 4.99
12V 11.77

Also, I didn't install the cooler myself, I had it installed at a local shop. Is it possible that the person didn't reattach the psu connections properly? I just find it very suspect that I was able to play a resource heavy game for so long and the issue didn't arise until after I had quit it.

 

[sportsfanboy]

Ok see how it goes. You might want to download memtest and burn it as a boot disk and run that for a while. That way you can see if your getting any errors. I would be willing to bet it's your memory that needs proper setting up.

 

[Copium]

Ok, I grabbed memtest and am running it now

 

[Copium]

so memtest locked up as well. Here's a pic of the results.

 

[lilotimz]

test each stick individually and go by process of elimination. Betting one of your sticks went bad.

 

[Copium]

I tried each stick individually. All of them caused memtest to lock up. When I booted with the last stick in, I got a solid tone and tried again. That time it successfully loaded memtest and began only to lock up again.

 

[sportsfanboy]

Ok It's time to set the ram up... Do you know what you have? Is there part numbers on the sticks?

LIL: We don't know the ram is bad yet,his first stop should be proper set up first.

 

[Copium]

I have 4 stick of 2gb each.

2xFatality PC2 8500 6-6-7@2.0V
PN OCZ2F10664GK

2xKingston 1.8V
KVR800D2N5/2G

 

[sportsfanboy]

Ok... Go into bios and set the timings to 6-6-6-18 with 1.8 volts and frequency to 800mhz. Test again, if it passes try gaming for a while, if it freezes you probably need a small bump on the north bridge and possibly a very small bump on ram voltage.

 

[sportsfanboy]

Part of your problem is you have completely different ram sets. They are both rated at different speed,timings and voltage,lol. It will be just a matter of finding what works well for both.

 

[Copium]

Should I just go and buy 2 4 gig sticks that are identical? I know that ram is pretty cheap and I'm sure that it would work better than trying to find a happy medium. Is this the kind of thing that can appear overnight? I've had this rig for almost 3 years now.

 

[Copium]

Also, if I were to bump up the voltage on the north bridge, is there a reasonable chance that I could blow it?

 

[sportsfanboy]

My bad I miss read what you wrote you weren't locking up until the new cooler,lol, One of those days,hehe.

Disregard what I said and start with reseating the ram. You might have knocked one or more of them a little loose when you installed the cooler.

 

[Copium]

Well, through this entire process, I have taken all of them out and put them back in a number of times and it would still lock up. I pit the Kingston sticks in, made the change to voltage and timings that you suggested and so far memtest has gotten farther than ever before so thing may be looking up. Knock on wood.

 

[Copium]

ok, so i ended up changing the voltage to the NB and that seems to have done the trick. The 2 kingston sticks pass memtest with flying colours. I attempted to put the OCZ sticks in but it appears that my mobo doesn't like one of the ram slots as i get a solid tone whenever there's a stick in it. I really appreciate you guys helping me out.

Just out of curiosity, how would and underpowered NB cause all these issue?

Thanks again.

 

[sportsfanboy]

Some boards depending on the amount of ram need a little more voltage to the north bridge to help with the extra stress of running more ram. What did you end up using for voltage?

 

[Copium]

I started off with 1.3 and ended up using 1.33