For anyone who has followed my trials and tribulations in my first attempt at overclocking, you might recall that I've achieved a stable overclock at 3.653ghz on the Q6600 2.4ghz quad. I however have been trying to track down the souce of a long beep coming from the system speaker whenever I run graphic intensive applications like 3DMark or FSX with all the bells and whistles on. I've tweaked voltages, bus frequencies - I've replaced the PSU, the memory and just yesterday the motherboard. All under warranty but the freight charges add up.Still no joy. I finally decided that other than the noise, it was causing no other issues and I decided to see if I could cover the system speaker, which is onboard the Evga 680i motherboard. So while it was screaming the long beep I tried putting my finger over it to see if that would help and, surprise to me, the pitch didn't change a bit. It should have done something.Then I remembered a trick an old mechanic taught me years ago when I had a Jaguar auto with 3 carburetors. The ONLY way to tune them was by sound - you'd take a small bit of rubber hose and place it against your ear and listen to the carbs like a stethescope. I decided to do that and try to locate the source of the beep. It *still* sounded like it was coming from the speaker but when I put the tube on it - nada. I could isolate every fan and hum in the system.To make a long story short I finally noticed a little red light under my desk - I have a 500W UPS with the system and 2 monitors plugged in. The red light was an overload warning AND it is accompanied by a long beep!!!I sit here with a VERY red face after over a month of tweaking, asking endless questions and ripping things apart and post this just as a caution to others to 'look outside the box'. Everything I read about overclocking was leading me to look for system instability, BIOS beeps etc. I heard one and *assumed* it was the speaker.The good side - at least now I really KNOW I have a stable 3.653 overclock! :-jumpy To all who tried to help me solve my problem I can only say Duh! *:-* VicVisit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/

Well, if it makes you feel any better. When I was doing my OC and testing and keeping constant watch on the CPU temp.... I smelt my PC burning. Yup.. I quickly shut off my machine and was on the floor sniffing like a dog to see which component on my PC was burning/burnt. The 8800GTX? the MB? Memory chip. The smell was getting stronger and stronger... But couldn't locate exactly which component even after I opened the PC an all.. Then I got tired and went to take a drink.. and noticed my kitchen stove was smoking and my dinner was on fire.What a relief I felt. It was not my new OCed PC. It was just my house!:)Manny

LOL! :)yup! it does make me feel better!Visit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/

Having triple Weber DCOEs on my Triumph, I can feel your pain.scott s..

>Having triple Weber DCOEs on my Triumph, I can feel your>pain.>>scott s.>.>LOL! But when all 3 are in sync they purr!Visit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/

:-lol :-yellow1 :-lol :-hah That's funny!If it makes you feel any better, my own crowning glory was when I took the HSF off my brand new Voodoo5 to put a proper layer of heatsink goop on so that I could overclock that sucker more. The paste that was on there was mixed with some epoxy type adhesive, so I cracked out a razor blade to clean it all off. Well, my cleaning went a little too far and, while scraping near the edge of one of the GPU chips, I managed to sever a few, but critical, PCB connections. I was now the unproud owner of one completely dead, top of the line, video card. Some $250 bux later (this was in like 2001, so very expensive for me) and I bought another one.At least in your case, warranty covered those not-so-dead components, so the only real damage was your pride and a bit of shipping cost :-).Gary

That's so unlike you Vic but at least you have nailed the problem.Onwards and upwards to 4.0GHz then now ? ;-)

>That's so unlike you Vic but at least you have nailed the>problem.>>Onwards and upwards to 4.0GHz then now ? ;-)>LOL! Actually got there but it wasn't stable. Had some room with the voltages but since it's not a speed that I'd run at I decided to stop at 3.653. And that's still with my memory under 800 rated at 1066. But, 3.6 was my goal for my first attempt AND I did it with 2 different mobo's. LOL!Visit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/

You didn't say you had a UPS!! ;)I have heard that beep before from UPS's, and I should have thought about that. Wasn't thinking about that at all--was thinking inside the case just like you were.I have done that kind of stuff too, with both cars and computers...such as forgetting to put the radiator cap back on after checking the coolant level--brilliant!! I found out soon enough after driving for 10 minutes.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

>You didn't say you had a UPS!! ;)>>I have heard that beep before from UPS's, and I should have>thought about that. Wasn't thinking about that at all--was>thinking inside the case just like you were.>I don't ever think about the UPS, it's just one of those things you get and forget.I did get a LOT of practice installing and removing motherboards though! :)Visit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/