[chrysler12]

I have this current setup:

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz 1333
Memory - GSkill 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2-SDRAM 1066 (PC2-8500)
Mobo - AsRock P45XE
VGA - EVGA GTX 260 Core 216
OS - Windows 7 32 bit

I assembled this system back in July and since then I haven't been fully successful with it. The main issue was, getting a BSOD (Machine_Check_Exception) whenever I run 3D games or watch a movie or even sometimes just randomly crashes. My friend and I did all sorts of troubleshooting which includes testing a specific component to find out which hardware is failing. None of these methods actually solved my problem.

Recently, my friend lend me a different model of CPU, namely a Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4 GHz 1066. Guess what? The system has been working perfectly fine. I was able to run games, watch movies, etc. and I still haven't had any crashes up to date.

With that being said, we thought that the CPU that I originally have (E8400) is the one that is causing the system to crash, so I RMA that CPU. Intel sent me a new E8400 yesterday and installed it. Guess what again? My system started crashing again with a blue screen error.

So, what's going on here exactly? I've got a new CPU already and it's still not working correctly... but it works with a different older CPU. Is there any compatibility issue goin on here? Particularly, with the FSB of the E8400 being 1333 while the memory I have on is only 1066? A friend also suggested that I should configure the timings in my BIOS to the actual setting of my memory.

Please help out... I wanna make use of the E8400 that I own. (The E6600 is not mine...)