JazzMang

The rumor is that DFi is working on an nVidia 680i solution.

Im thinking its the RAM. All those stability issues reek of ram problems to me...

I dont know about $500! Closer to $300.

The issue is with the ICs and not with the motherboards. Some earlier revisions of the PC4000EB were fairly successful OCers. The newer batches have been pretty lame as far as OC-ability goes. My set only goes to 255 reliably - this is coming from my previous high of 296 with my old Ballistix PC4000. I have tweaked as much as I can stand with little to no gain in RAM speed. Oh well... at least the timings are ok.

Should be on the sticker.

We already answered you. Its the RAM. When my ballistix started crapping out, the same thing happened. Little to no responsiveness in BIOS. I just had to keep trying and I finally throttled down the RAM speed enough to be stable.

Just downclock it below PC3200 and it should be ok with about 2.8v vDIMM for a while - to still be usable in the meantime.

Yes, they have lifetime warranty. If you got it from Crucial, they may give you a refund. All non-Crucial purchases only get 'fair market value', which is less than half the selling price offered back as Crucial Store Credit.

RAM is bad. End of story. These little buggers have no life whatsoever. Way to go with the thorough testing, Crucial.

RMAing takes a while. Newegg does not cross-ship, so you have to send it back, they verify, then they send you your new pair. All in all, anywhere from 1.5-3 weeks, on average.

I think its more or less an exponential thing. They work ok for 30 days, crap themselves very quickly and mellow out around 190-200 MHz.

Yes, go through Newegg. When you RMA it, they will not be able to replace it with the same thing (as it is no longer made). I would look at OCZ, Mushkin, and G.Skill PC4000 equivalents. They won't OC as much as the Ballistix, but they will last.

Recall most board voltage sensors are utter crap. Only trust the multimeter if you are truly concerned.

its the ballistix. Recall that memtest is a supplemental tool for truly testing the memory. You really need to run superpi and prime95, then some 3dmark05/06 if it gets that far. Superpi really shows the ballistix errors quickly, but IMHO, its the Ballistix, no doubt. Had the same problem both times the RAM died.

400 or so should do fine. It will take windows a while to re-allocate RAM to prime tho.