New 2600k build locking up....

[majin ssj eric]

Ok, so I have had my build up and running for about 3 weeks and just recently it has begun locking up randomly. Its odd because I have run countless stress tests and it always passes them but will freeze doing something simple like running the screen saver or playing a youtube video. I checked the bios and my ram timing had somehow been changed to 9-9-9-24 as opposed to its rated timing of 8-8-8-24. I changed it back and so far, so good. Could this be the cause of my recent lockups or is that not possible? I have very little understanding of ram timing.

My build is listed in my sig and I have OC'ed it to as high as 4800MHz without issue but once it started locking up I dropped it back to stock speed (and it still locked up again). Again, since discovering the change in timing and reverting back to the rated timing it hasn't locked up (crosses fingers). Let me know what you guys think and if I need to provide anymore info.

 

[eloric]

Have you run a mem check? Intermittent problems like this are hard to diagnose, because you have to wait to see if you fixed it.

I would not recommend running your machine flat out at 4800 Mhz day in day out. The faster you run, the shorter the life span. Unless you need to squeeze every bit of juice out of that CPU, consider running at stock, or something mild like 4000 to 4200 Mhz.

 

[majin ssj eric]

I'm currently at 4121Mhz after changing the timing. Computer still hasn't locked up yet....

 

[majin ssj eric]

I'm 2 days without any problems since changing back to 8-8-8-24. I hope that was the problem...

 

[jfby]

I had major problems when my motherboard would 'auto' set my RAM timings: complete crashes within 30 seconds to 30 minutes of Windows startup, weak performance in games and benchmarks, screen would lock up, etc.

Factory timing for the kit was 9-9-9-27 and the system had it set to 9-9-9-24. I did a LOT of trouble shooting, and I figured that since 'auto' was detected that RAM timing wasn't the issue. I was very wrong; it's now manually set to the correct timing.

I went from crashing 5-10 times per day using the computer only a few hours before I got too frustrated to running up to 24 hrs a day for a week on one occasion and hasn't crashed in 6 months. I can't tell you why this is the way it is, I just now it fixed my issue and hopefully it fixes yours.