I have a XFX 780i with a q6600. Its overclocked at 3.65, fsb @ 1825,456x8 vcore @ 1.3812. I ve been playing games and encoding with almost no problems for two weeks. I've had 1 hardlock and couple of blue screens. Blue screens imo because I o/c my memory to far OCZ SLI 800mhz, had it @1066 5-4-4-15 backed it off to 1024 no problems. I wanna prime test for at least 16hrs, but at about the third hour my temps start to rise and keep doing so till it hardlocks. It was hardlocked @ 82c, which I have to add 5c to match bios temp. I was ready to lose the chip just to see how far it would climb and see if it would go back down, but it hardlocks.My temps idle @ 42c(37c+5c). I have a tuniq tower , CM690 2 exhaust fans 4 intakes and two open fan slots that were taken up by the heatsink. If anyone can help me out I would really appreciate it.

. After 1 hour.

What cpu cooler are you using, Q6600's are usually completely stable, or near complete(nothing is ever completely stable imo) stable at 3.4ish nothing higher. On air.

Did you try reseating the cpu cooler rather its air, im assuming you're using stock with temps like that. Can you play graphic intensive games w/o the cpu shutting down on you from heat issues?

My suggestions-
Reseat cpu cooler with artic silver 5
Buy better cooling
Downclock some and run same test, see what happens.

Well i bumped up my fsb. Since a couple of people I talked to think anything over 1 hour on stress test is a waste of time, since I will never max it out. I've played crysis and ran spyware scan and virus scan and autogk all at the same time with my memory at 800mhz 1066 crashes crysis 1024 all good 54412 2t trc15.Right know p95 2hrs 3.7,1.392 1850fsb 462x8 coretemp 61,61,59,59. XFX 780i will post up to 1885fsb with q6600, x9 multi. which will be over 4.0 but will lock in windows. Ireplied to my own post because I was bored noone helped and I drank too much HEHE. Maybe I'm greedy and cant get me oc that high on air but thats what ocing is about. Push it to the limit.

2hrs and temps are starting to climb62 in coretemp(+5c). Reseated h/s 3x Always use as5. I got tuniq tower. I m at 1.39. I can play crysis all settings high 8x antaliasing (22fps avg), run & complete spyware scan, viruscan, and autogk with no problems9.After I kept failing p95 this was a real world test for me. PG2 and Utorrent also running. I m stable till the test get to 320kb than it overheats. I will never get it to 82c. Do you think I'm stable? Played Crysis for 7hrs on monday. I should be ablr to higher without overheating,imo. Why would it get so hot, I guess thats my actual question. Bad chip should I RMA. Chip is G0.

If you played crysis for that long and no issues then you should be fine. I had a xq6700 a while back. I was running peltier cooling and I got 50C temps after a while.

I guess the issue is that we want perfect systems, pc's that wont crash but it happens. You could rma it if you're not satisfied I guess, but I figure you might get the same result w/o actually trying to upgrade your heatsink.

I remember when the q6700 first came out. It didnt come with a heatsink and fan. A lot of people complained. Someone stated "Intel figured that if you could pay 1k usd for a cpu you can buy a heatsink for it, basically intel is saying there's no way a stock cooler could keep it cool

You quad is right below that, so dont expect anything spectacular

So is the tuniq tower crap I thought it was up there with the thermaltake. I m just greedy I guess I dont really
think 16-24 prime is realistic.

16-24 hours prime is possible if you have adequate cooling. Tuniq tower is okay, not the best for overclocked quads though.