Help -newbie in trouble with M17 and qx9300 -self installed

Hi, and help appreciated!

I,ve and M17, 4gb ram and dual 3870 with crossfire. I put the QX9300 in a week ago, and seem to run very well for a while.....

First crashed -BSOD- 2 days ago running maxthon (browser). Since then I've tried removing programs and rolling back drivers I changed, re-installed windows, then went all the way and did complete system respawn.

BSOD or black screen then reboot now so frequent I can't even get to run orthos before it goes again. Any wisdom very gratefully recieved!

 

i would try re-seating the CPU, since this seems to be a hardware issue, not software.

 

reseat the current cpu and if it continues, replace the old one in and do a stress test like run 3dmark06 a few times or do a SuperPI stress run to make sure that it's cpu related and not a motherboard issue.

If it does turn out to be the cpu, contact the vendor/ebayer you got it from.

Was this QX9300 an engineering sample? Or was it an OEM?

 

Try to reseat the CPU as stated above. Also, did you properly put the cooling system back - including reapplying new thermal paste? The QX9300 is a very hot CPU so it might not have adequate cooling.

If all else fails, the CPU is probably defective.

 

Thanks for the suggestions people. Have now tried re-inserting qx9300, but no change.

Even worse, I've put the original processor back in and seems to be no better. Vista won't even load and keeps cycling back to alien recovery environment.

Perhaps it's software, so I'm currently running the full respawn process wih original processor. If this is ok I shall try putting the qx9300 back in before I install any programs.

 

Good to see that it's probably a software issue. That QX9300 will treat you well once everything is fixed.

 

Thanks. I'm currently putting programs back on 1 at a time and doing 10mins orthos and a run of 3d mark 06. Wonder if I'll ever track down the problem...

 

One thing to add would be to run HWMonitor in the background to see your max temps and then current temps while running orthos/3dmark.

 

Thanks, I have been doing that. Previously I did see max temps of 70 deg. C and 91 deg. C for graphics cards. After trawling the forums, that seemed to be OK though.

 

if one of your cards is way hotter than the other you might want to check into what is causing that....

 

Yeah, GPU temps pretty even, although consistent difference in CPU temps between cores 0 and 1, then 2 and 3 under orthos. Only around 5 deg C. I'm wondering of orthos is only testing the first 2?

Anyway so far so good. Got most software back on and no unwanted events (not with the alienware anyway -rest of my life; whole other story )

QX9300 is awesome. It's been a while since I played any computer games and GTA IV has amazed me with this setup.....

 

remember this, 600 for a new mobo from alienware..

 

Make sure you ram is installed correctly and you did not overclock, sometimes, taking he memory battery out for like 10min works.