Hi all! I'm in a little delima here. I just built a gaming rig which is a HUGE upgrade from my XP3200+. Components:

Asus P5K mb
E8400 cpu
2g (2x1g)G.Skill cl4 pc6400 4-4-4-12
Pilat nVidia 9600gt
Antec NSK6580 mid-tower case w/ Earthwatts 430w powersupply
Xigmatek HDT-S1280 cpu cooler
Sony DVD RW, Asus DVD RW
WD 250G 7200rpm, WD 200g 7200rpm, WD 120g 7200rpm


I'm oc'ing it to 4.02g stable with no problem. runs stable and cool under prime95 for hours. settings are 445x9 cpu, and memory is 1069 w/ 5-5-5-15. the problem I get is when running cod4, asassin's creed, ect.. it'll crash after 10 minutes or so . I'm swapping out the Palit card for an Asus en9600gt TOP that's oc'd @720 instead of 650. When I back down fsb to 425 the games are stable.

My question is, how can I get it above that 4g mark with stable game play? And what's the best I can get out of the 8400? thanks in advance!
Cripp

Man, I'd just toss a guess out there and point to your power supply. Thats kinda weak, man! And while it may run ONE item at full power, like the processor under primes small ffts. Or ATI Tools artifact test drawing maximum power through your vid card.

But when you drain a large amount of juice through them both, and your Mobo needing some power for the FSB and other functions as you OC, perhaps your weak power supply just cant do it, and crash!

--Lupi!

Maybe try being a little more friendly with your RAM (6400 running at 8000 isn't nice), otherwise i'd agree with Lupiron.

Yeah, I'd imagine that your PSU isn't powerful enough. Symptoms of this is extreme stuttering in some parts of the game and crashing.

So I guess about a 600w would work a lot better then? Anyone know have a recommendation?

Just off the top of my head the Modular Hiper 580W PSU is quite a tidy bundle. It ran my 6000+ @3.5 with two ATI/AMD 3870's fine so should give your rig a breather .

I'd say just look for any TRUE power types that are very efficient with their wattage, and sure, 600ish sould be way better than 430! And thats more like 340 watts with that weak power supply!

You can always look on Craigs list in your local area as well. (if you have one!) And find a cheaper power supply there!

--Lupi!

psu is a little week....but why don't you try doing what closed_deal said. First lets drop that ram speed down to say 900ish.....and if it still crashes...then go out and get a 600W psu. OCZ's 600W psu are pretty good too. They've been really good to me. plus on newegg...there's a pretty good deal for em.

That Power supply has 30 amps 12v and should be fine as the 9600GT on a loaded QX6700 system only need 26 amps.

Ah, Antec Earthwatts. Didn't see that. Just saw the 430W.

If that's the case, then it simply means the system is unstable. Tweak the settings around, what more can I say?

I just ordered an OCZ GameXStream 700w modular psu. I think that'll do the trick. On a side note, when I'm looking at coretemp & cpuid my core 0 and core 1 have about 5-6 degrees difference. At Idle core0: 49c core1: 55c. Tj.max 105c I'm only using 1 80mm front case and a 120mm exhaust. The Xigmatek uses a 120mm also, there's a place for one more front fan and one on the side right above the cpu cooler. My question is are those temps fine, under orthos stress temps even out at 70c-72c but don't any higher.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817341002

Thanks guys!
cripp

After installing the ps, everything is running good. I'm having 1 problem, when I get to fsb445 the video crashes after a few minutes in gameplay. Prime95 runs stable fine. I have the PCIe set to 100mhz in the bios. I back the ram speed down to 897mhz and swapped the video to an Asus en9600gt TOP which is factory oc'd to 720mhz. Is 9x440 the limit, I want to run at over the 4g mark. What can I do?
Cripp

I wanted to run over the 4ghz mark just to say I could, but after a whole day of testing and seeing what settings auctually ran apps faster i went with a lower speed 436x9, thats 3.924ghz, that close to 4ghz....also I was keeping in mind I want to keep this chip for a couple years, and I leave my comp on 24x7....I can run orthos for 24 hours without a problem, and I can play cod4 and, crysis, bioshock, you name it, it will do it. Just my 2 cents..


How long were you running Prime 95 or Orthos? Good thing you got rid of the 430watt psu...I remember a few years back that I never really thought the PSU played that big of a role in overclocking and performance, then I bought my first Thermaltake, and my oc's went up and the computer no longer made noises when loaded, fans stayed at there rpm's..

AO