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It sounds like you have an “interesting” situation with your computer in the sense of the old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.”
You have so many things going on that I can’t give any firm answers but I’ll touch on a few points.
The thing about proper air flow applies IF the case is closed. Leaving the cover off actually is a solution to air flow problems but with three case fans, rounded cables, and an 80° case temperature that doesn’t seem to be your problem. It is also easy to spot non-working fans with the cover off.
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It's been hanging for the last two hours with some browser windows open and MusicMatch 7.5 playing. 100 F CPU temp and 82 F case temp. Sounds OK.
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BIOS flashing is probably my least favorite thing to do on a computer. I’ve never come across an explanation for why sometimes it takes on the first try and sometimes I have to do the very same thing over and over again until it works. The only thing I can offer there is to be sure you’ve completely removed the old BIOS. It’s motherboard specific so you’ll have to do some research but you need to remove the motherboard battery and locate a specific jumper that drains the BIOS.
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The hardware and overclock forums hinted at these BIOS flashing problems but is sort of comforts me to know others on 2+2 have had these problems. In my case flashed several BIOS's using all three procedures (alt-2 on boot, with AFUDOS.EXE, and with a Asus utility that loads from the web). The one I'm using now seemed to take and go on and boot up. Others failed in inconsistant ways e.g. sometimes wouldn't continue to boot, other times I would get the "overclock failure" message or the "checksum error" message plus miscellaneous errors.
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Yes, Arctic Silver probably is the best thermal compound and I have some myself, but I really think it’s overkill unless a person is pushing a system to it’s limits. I mentioned the Radio Shack stuff because it’s probably quicker to go to a local store and try it out than to order from a website and wait and pay shipping ... and the stuff really is good enough.
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Wouldn't Fry's have it? I live within a half hour of three of them and hate Radio Shack more than Fry's.
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Reseating the heat sink is no big deal. The first time will take a while but after you’ve done it once it only takes a couple minutes. I’m pretty sure you can find very specific instructions if you dig around on the Asus website. It is entirely possible that the seal has broken; it only takes a slight twist of the unit, frequently caused by poking around in the case while routing cables or such. The Thermalright heatsinks are extremely easy to install; no soldering, just clips on.
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If I get another batch of problems I'll do this first.
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Prime95 is a favorite for stress testing. If you computer will run the torture test for a while without overheating or crashing, well ... have fun. It sounds interesting. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
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I'll check out this test. When I did BurninTest basic I got one floppy read error one time in several half hour (or whatever the limit is on the free one). This made me wonder if the floppy device was a problem during the BIOS flashes (note the main problem with the web based flashes was getting to the Asus web site).
Good post. Thanks.
~ Rick