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So, I have a pretty strange scenario here... It started a few months ago when my old EVGA 7900 GS video card died. I replaced it with a new 8800 GT Superclocked edition... no troubles there. After doing some more research I realized I paid way too much for the 8800 GT at a local Circuit City and returned it and ordered a pair of 9600 GTs from Newegg for about 50 dollars more. About this same time I started overclocking my CPU. I have an Intel Core2 Duo E6550 (stock 2.33 Ghz) and upped the FSB to 1900 to achieve 3.3 Ghz with a Zalman 9500 CPU cooler, and the temps never were an issue. I was going along fine until one day while streaming video via a Slingbox my computer screen froze (didn't go blank/black or anything) then the sound started looping and creating a lot of loud buzzing from my speakers. I quickly hit the reset button on my tower and everything came back fine. However, there was nothing related to the crash in my event viewer.
The crashes became more and more frequent over the next few weeks to the point where I fired up Bioshock, played about 20 minutes, then crashed. I restarted the computer, fired up the game again, and it didn't even get to the first splash screen before it froze again. FYI temperatures on the 9600 GTs never exceeded 60° C while this was happening. After checking numerous online message boards I came to realize there were some issues with the 9600 GT that could be leading to my problems. But I also did a double check on my BIOS settings and realized that when I OC'd my CPU I forgot to up the voltages accordingly. I went to 1.45 v and then my computer didn't crash for about 3 days!! Then one night, while playing Call of Duty 4, it froze and crashed again.
About this time I had started the EVGA step-up program to trade out my cards back to the 8800 GT, this time the new "dual-slot cooler" design (my next mistake, this new cooler actually runs a lot hotter than my 9600s). Not 2 hours after slapping the new card in my rig, it crashed again.
So today I said "screw it" and tried going back to stock speeds on everything, so I went into BIOS and hit "restore defaults" and restarted. NOW GET THIS: with the mobo (XFX 680 SLi) set to stock everything, the computer would start up, load windows and run fine for about 5 seconds, then BAM! Blue Screen Of Death and instant restart.... did this 3 times before I went back into BIOS, reverted to my 3.3Ghz Overclock(7x - 1900 FSB - 1.45 volts) with tighter RAM timings (2GB Corsair @800 Mhz, 4-4-4-15 timings) and now its running fine (for now) until I try gaming again when I'm sure it will crash again.
Any ideas out there? at this point I am totally lost. I could have gotten a bad video card again, but then what of the mobo issues? AARGHH!!!
The crashes became more and more frequent over the next few weeks to the point where I fired up Bioshock, played about 20 minutes, then crashed. I restarted the computer, fired up the game again, and it didn't even get to the first splash screen before it froze again. FYI temperatures on the 9600 GTs never exceeded 60° C while this was happening. After checking numerous online message boards I came to realize there were some issues with the 9600 GT that could be leading to my problems. But I also did a double check on my BIOS settings and realized that when I OC'd my CPU I forgot to up the voltages accordingly. I went to 1.45 v and then my computer didn't crash for about 3 days!! Then one night, while playing Call of Duty 4, it froze and crashed again.
About this time I had started the EVGA step-up program to trade out my cards back to the 8800 GT, this time the new "dual-slot cooler" design (my next mistake, this new cooler actually runs a lot hotter than my 9600s). Not 2 hours after slapping the new card in my rig, it crashed again.
So today I said "screw it" and tried going back to stock speeds on everything, so I went into BIOS and hit "restore defaults" and restarted. NOW GET THIS: with the mobo (XFX 680 SLi) set to stock everything, the computer would start up, load windows and run fine for about 5 seconds, then BAM! Blue Screen Of Death and instant restart.... did this 3 times before I went back into BIOS, reverted to my 3.3Ghz Overclock(7x - 1900 FSB - 1.45 volts) with tighter RAM timings (2GB Corsair @800 Mhz, 4-4-4-15 timings) and now its running fine (for now) until I try gaming again when I'm sure it will crash again.
Any ideas out there? at this point I am totally lost. I could have gotten a bad video card again, but then what of the mobo issues? AARGHH!!!