A7N8X-dlx + 2100 instability - northbridge super hot?

[stultus]

So, I was running along nicely with my rig as in my sig nicely for a long time. Then recently, I started crashing in games. Tonight, I started crashing all over the place.

I have the case off (I noticed that helped earlier), but I relaxed my timings and underclocked down a couple hundred MHz to see if that was the problem. I can't run prime95 more than a couple minutes before crashing (when I first built this, I was rock-solid).

I touched my ram, feels cool, touch the heatsink, feels fine, touched the northbridge, and WOW! It's hot. I don't remember it being hot before. However, I can't think of why it would be hot now but not previously.

Does anyone have any guesses what my gradual progression to instability could be caused by? Arctic silver wearing out? Did I burn out my chip by running it too hot (temps would have been acceptable - not over 60C). Did my northbridge suddenly start to die? I'm just confused as to what's going on and what I should do to fix.

 

[Boonesmi]

you need some better case cooling if the northbridge is getting that hot

have you tried running memtest86? just to rule out if its memory errors (you can download at memtest86.com)

 

[joe2004]

Let me guess ... the board was refurbished?
So they replaced some electrical component that went bad. But the problem was somewhere else and that replacement is goign bad again?

 

[stultus]

The board was refurb, yes. However, I can run prime95 all night and day at default speeds and vcore.

 

[Boonesmi]

for the most part ive found nothing at all wrong with most of the refurb boards ive used... dont let his earlier post scare you about it causing problems