Well got to the bottom of it eventually.

It was the motherboard. Fitted a new one and all peachy again.

Thanks for the input all.

Had a crash while installing wow from the disc last night and had to power off and on again to recover it.After the reboot wow installed and fully updated without issue.Then managed to play for around 3 hours again with out issue before posting here.

Would i be right in thinking when bearing in mind what i have said above then the ram would be the more likely cause?

Nvidia monitor shows slight differences in voltages to cpu-z it shows ram is at 1.9v and cpu is at 1.15 and does not change.

Im guessing that nvmonitor picks up how they are set in the bios and cpu-z monitors them in real time,and the cpu voltage would raise under load so these figures are not far enough apart to cause any issues are they?

Hi all

Well lowerig the settings on my memory did not help.

Have installed cpu-z and monitored voltages and as far as i can tell everything looks ok but i only have a limited idea on what im looking for really.

Cpu is an amd athlon64 x2 5200+ with a voltage of 1.008 on idle.Ram seems stable at 1.80v and the gpu voltage does not show in cpu-z.

Had a couple of crashes today even with the side off the case and a big fan blowing air inside.

Have not tried checking voltages under load but i have had some freezes even when the comp was idle today.Wish in some respects the crashes would be more often to try and help diagnose the dam thing.seems to range from one every few days to 2 in under an hour back to a few days apart again.

Toying with the idea of replacing ram or psu now to try and rule them out as the cause and get a stable system again.However don't want to waste money if i can help it as i don't earn a fortune so any input would be appreciated.

Any idea's or input on what i should be looking for with the info in cpu-z would be welcomed as i have limited knowledge with this sort of thing

Had 2 PSU's go on me - one most catastrophically with a loud *bang* and a lot of white powder (contents of the capacitor) spread across the PC - took out my wonderful Pioneer Slot-Loading DVD drive. I love slot-loaders, you just can't get 'em nowadays.

Should have added if my assumptions are in any way wrong please don't hesitate to put me right

My experience with this sort of thing is limited at best as i've never seen a psu or ram go beofre.Have usually replaced the whole insides of the pc with in 18 months of new until this present comp and am just reliant on what i have experienced to date.

At this point am inclined to think it was a heating issue of some kind.

For the last week have had the case open with a fan blowing inside it and the system has been stable and i have not had a single crash.

Surely if it was the psu then i would have seen freezes during this time and also think it would be the same for the ram.Did try booting the system with first one stick and tested then tried the other last weekend and the symptoms persisited with each stick.How ever will give the suggestions a try and see what happens.Will post with the results in a day or so when i have managed to test.My mobo will allow me to change voltages etc as it's an enthuiast board.

Unfortunatly don't have any spare ram or psu to test with but as previously stated don't think they are the cause but you never know my assumptions may be wrong.

I do appreciate the input guys thanks it has been welcomed

I lowered the Mhz, you can find out what mhz represent each ram speed.. I bassically lowered the Mhz on the RAM to the next groups speed, I think at the time my Ram was rated for 133mhz and I ran it as 100Mhz. Though the function to do this is not in all BIOS setups.

As its been working for a few years without issue it could simply be one of the RAM sticks are faulty due to age. You might want to try removing RAM and trying one at a time. Might find a particular stick is the issue and replacing that would be the way to go.

bifta wrote: Ok thanks for the info tera will give it a try later. Am a little skeptical as to wether it will help or nat as this board has been stable for around 2 years without the need to do this but it is worth a try.

Would you have been using the same powersupply for that length of time? Because you know that vDroop will lose you voltage on your 12v, 5v and CPU feeds over time - typically about 10 - 15% per year (Due to capacitor aging). Therefore that 600W PSU after a year is just 510W, and a year later is just 433W, and so on... (Worst case scenario). So - it could be your CPU or graphics card (or memory) is being starved of power. You should have apps with your mobo you can download to show it, if not try something like CPUz or CoreTemp...

Ok thanks for the info tera will give it a try later.

Am a little skeptical as to wether it will help or nat as this board has been stable for around 2 years without the need to do this but it is worth a try.

bifta wrote: Ok thanks wild will give it a go. Im assuming all you did was lover the voltage slightly and not mess with the timings?

I'm thinking wildride is referring to underclocking the speed of the Ram

it's a trial n error of knocking it down and then seeing if it locks up, you could do it one Mhz at a time but that would take a while to do maybe better to do 50Mhz or so and see how that goes and it it's ok then maybe start raising one or two mhz until it locks up then drop it by one or two, I had to do this with a gigabyte motherboard that didn't like the Ram running at full speed i lost about 45Mhz until a bios update was released that fixed the issue, might be worth checking that the bios is upto date if you haven't already.