Need help with new build

[wizardofwas]

Greetings all,
I just finished polishing off a new build on Monday, and have finally settled down to see if the system is stable. Running at stock speeds (except 17x multiplier on FSB (up from 14x, plus 1:4 ram ratio as 1600ram requires 800mhz per stick)) results in a prime95 bsod in under 20 seconds. My ram timings are set at Mushkin default settings (7-7-6-18-1T). Cooling at idle is 22C on processor, 42C on video card. Under stress (Empire Total War for 3 hours) it never went above 27C. What could be causing my computer to BSOD in prime95 so quickly? Again, all other BIOS settings are at default.
Thanks!
My build specs are below:


CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit
Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA
AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Black
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AM3
mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

 

[Yoosty]

First off re you using the latest version of Prime95 for 64-bit OS. If not then go here and get it.
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

If it still Bsod's after trying Prime95 64-bit, then it could be a number of things, like ram, graphic card drivers or Bios'. Check and see if your board has new Bios' and update to them.

The latest Bios for the M4A785TD-V EVO BIOS is 0219 which is suppose to "Improve the system stability for sideport memory".

Asus Download link for your Board "Bios".
http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=fcsXWSxnhzZE9rnR&content=download

Also a good place for help is the Asus VIP Forum Users' Board, below is the one for your board.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=M4A785TD-V+EVO&SLanguage=en-us

Get MemTest to test your Ram out to see if there is a problem there. Test 1 stick at a time at first and then both. If you have a problem then when running both during MemTest, try switching Slots to see if it that is the problem. You can download MemTest here.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Memtest86+-1.51-download-996.html

Or here from main site, that also give you info on what to do.
http://www.memtest.org/

Please keep us inform on your progress.

 

[wizardofwas]

Thank you for your support- Memtest ran fine (ran that on Monday night), and I have the latest BIOS.

My current solution is to drop the FSB multiplier to x14 (as opposed to x17)- turns out x17 is unstable without a voltage boost, something I am wary to do this early in the chip's life.

Ran prime95 for 30 minutes with no errors before I manually stopped it- drastic improvement from 10 seconds shows me that it is now stable.

The only problem I have at this point is that Vista x64 boot time is slow (compared to XP)- but that's a common problem. Also, Empire: Total War crashes during campaign naval battles, but that is a bug with the game, not my machine.

The only other question I have is, is the 1:4 FSB/Ram ratio too high?

Thanks again, I'll be sure and come back if any problems pop back up.