[darkpuppet]

I wish any of my non-overclocked CPUs were running as low as 40C.. they run a pretty steady mid 40's. While 50C is a bit high, it's not uncommon..especially at full load.

of course, if you're overclocking, you're gonna want to keep your temps as low as possible, but if you're room is room temp, you'll never get your CPU down to the 20's without evaporative cooling.

Typical Surface error free temps max out at 55C... that's the point that most non-overclocked CPUs will experience an increased possibility of issues.

So in this case, you probably want to improve your cooling situation.. aim for low 40's-high 30's .. (unfortunately, the better overclockers right now seem to be intel chips).

the 2.5-3-3-7 is your memory's timings...the first one is typically the CAS Latency timing... the most common one overclockers tweak. See what your memory supports, and drop it as low as it'll go to give it a shot. This will gain a little extra performance with memory intensive apps.

your memory seems to have pretty high latencies set right now.. I'd be aiming for a 2-3-2-6 or better personally.

you don't really need a heatsink on your ram unless you're trying to overclock that too.

As for the overclocking failure after running hot for some time, I'd try running at a slightly lower clock or stock and see if it fails to boot after some time, or if it's just the overclocking.

This could be caused by many things... everything from clock errors from heat, to voltage regulators being overtaxed, to motherboard interconnects detaching when fully cooled....

So best to start with, "does this happen if I don't overclock?" and work from there IMO.. or see what voltage it's putting into the chip... the automatic settings might be too agressive, and you may be able to turn it down which will lower power dissipation as well.