Locking up after vid card install

[J9Darkwing]

Salute and howdy!
Yesterday I went down and bought my second bfg 8800 GT video card and an Asus Arctic cube cpu fan.
After installing them I suddenly got a locking up problem and a rebooting problem. When I tried to reboot it would hang in the post screen, hit the power button and it would be set to default clocking and stop in the post and tell me to hit f1 to reset my bios, hit the power button again and it would be back to normal until the next time I rebooted then have to go through all that again.
As far as the locking up while vista was running I decided to do a fresh install and see if that cleared it. Apparently it hasn't. I did have my q6600 overclocked to 2.81 ghz but after the most recent hang I reset it to default 2.4 ghz.
When it hangs and I have to hit the power button it usually won't restart and I have to open my case, reset the bios and unplug my power supply to get it to come back up.
I'm running orthos now and at the 2.4 ghz bios setting it's staying at 48 and 50c on my #0 and #1 cores (haven't figured out how to get it to burn all four yet).
This is most frustrating because I've been running this system with a stock cooler and one 8800gt card with NO problems.
Any suggestions or help? I'd sure like to get this puppy overclocked to 3.2 or 3.4 and stable.

 

[J9Darkwing]

Rephrasing the question. . .

Salute and howdy!
I'm having a bit of a problem. . .
Here are my system specs:
Q6600 G0 stepping
Asus P5N32 e sli (680i)
4gig Crucial Ballistix ddr2 ram
x2 BFG 8800GT in sli
850w Rosewill PSU
Vista 64bit

Ok, I've been running this system overclocked at 2.8ghz for about two months since the only cpu fan I had was stock. I had NO problems whatsoever. I never tried to run it higher than that but assumed it would clock higher from the posts I've seen in the forums. Friday I bought my second 8800GT and an Arctic Square cpu fan. I installed them and left my clock at 2.8 and started to play crysis and my puter hard locked. Then it wouldn't boot right until I dropped my clock back down to stock 2.4 ghz.
I've had no success getting it to overclock now at all. My coretemp shows me to be in the 30s and 40s running in the low 50's when loaded with prime95. These temps are at 2.4ghz.
Someone please help. I'd really like to get it to 3.2 or 3.4ghz stable but as it stands I can't even run it at 2.8. Best I can get without locking up is 2.6.
As a side note I've taken out the second video card and still can't OC it. Can't imagine that a new and better cpu cooler would be the problem. I have 7 120mm fans so there's plenty of air moving through the box.
Here are the stock voltages shown in the voltage monitor section of my bios. (I've tried increasing some of them with no success.)
vcore 1.2
mem 1.88
1.2V HT 1.26
NB 1.24
SB 1.53
CPU VTT 1.26
DDR2 Term .96
3.3v 3.31
5V 4.86
12V 11.84

Thanks for any help you can give. If someone with a p5n32 e sli and a q6600 that's oc'd to 3.2 or 3.4 has a saved bios profile I may have that would be most appreciated.

 

[NosBoost300]

lol these asus boards are bad at oc'ing quad cores, i've owned the p5n32-e sli plus, and the regular p5n32-e sli..

ii've taken mine up to 3.337 ghz... takes alot of juice on this mobo

my vcore was 1.45
mem 2.4
1.2ht was 1.45
nb 1.40
sb 1.65
cpu vtt 1.5

 

[J9Darkwing]

Ok, I'm going to give those settings a shot.
I'll reboot, go into my bios and set my voltages to those you have listed then set my fsb to about 1332 or so. If it works then wooo hooo. If it doesn't then it won't post and I'll have to unplug my machine, pull off the side of my box, pull out my bottom vid card, jump the little jumper, put it all back, reset my bios, etc. I can't tell you how many times I've gone through that this weekend. Certainly not looking forward to it.

 

[J9Darkwing]

Didn't even change the fsb and it locked up. Put in the suggested voltages and left the clock the same. Rebooted and it hung on post.

 

[NosBoost300]

1332 is one of those fsb's that don't work.. this board has alot of fsb holes

set it to 1500 and run the settings i gave

leaving the ram unlinked makes it a bit more picky and difficult as well.. so leave the ram linked and set it to like 3:2 or something like that... so the ram doesnt end up something stupid crazy high

 

[J9Darkwing]

I got it to boot up using the 1500. Tried to run superpi and it wouldn't calculate. Hung on reboot. But whoaa, proves to me that it can do it. I was astounded 3.37ghz. Now if I can just get it to do that and be stable I'll be one happy duck.

 

[NosBoost300]

ya, finding the sweet spot is incredibly hard... but possible on the board... you have to get the right voltages for everything.. weather it be less or more... someone managed 3.8ghz on xtreme systems.. i'll see if i can get his settings

 

[J9Darkwing]

I appreciate it Nos! Thanks to your advice I've been able to clock it from 3 to 3.37ghz but it's unstable. I tinkered with it for several hours earlier with no success.
It will boot into windows and things seem to run ok but superpi keeps giving me errors. I've run prime95 without any of my core temps going over 60c but I guess that doesn't matter if the system isn't stable. Note that I only ran prime05 for a few minutes. Knowing it's unstable and still running a torture test gives me pause.

I'd like to rule out memory issues by stating that my overclocks have been with memory unlinked and set to 800mhz, confirmed by cpuz. I did try linking it and synching it but neither would post right. At 1500fsb a link of 5/4 was something like 1350 and of 3/4 was in the 1100 range. (not exact numbers but I do remember they were over two hundred mhz over where my ram is supposed to be.

 

[J9Darkwing]

By Darwin I swear (I'm an athiest) I'll never buy another Asus motherboard for as long as I live!