Skyrim Troubleshooting Compilation

UPDATE: It's quite possible that disabling Speedstep is overkill.  I'm having success re-enabling Speedstep and disabling CORE PARKING.

For the past day days week, I've been troubleshooting a peculiar problem with my new system.  So far I have three four five posts.  I'm going to use this as a summary post with links to the different parts.

BUT FIRST, a quick summary: new system runs everything great - no issues with anything EXCEPT for Skyrim, which causes a system freeze/reboot sometimes within a minute, sometimes after an hour or two.  After some troubleshooting, the problem is hopefully fixed.


The current fix involves turning off Intel Speedstep by disabling three options in the BIOS:

CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)
C3/C6 State Support
CPU EIST Function

I posted some charts and data from running with Intel Speedstep off in part 5.

Posts related to troubleshooting Skyrim Blinking Out/Crashing/Rebooting:
For the initial post describing the system and initial troubleshooting steps (no resolutions but with fancy graphs), click on Part 1.

For the second post with more troubleshooting steps at the suggestion of a friendly Nexus Forums user and with crazy load testing (but no resolutions), click on Part 2.

The third post describes the replacement of the Power Supply Unit (no-name 700W PSU) that came with the system with a 1000W Silverstone SST-ST1000-P, which resulted in no resolutions BUT with some "gut check" tests that produced some positive results.  To read this, click on Part 3.

The fourth post is what the system looks like with Intel Speedstep disabled.  Please universe, let it be this one; I just want to play Skyrim!  This can be found in Part 4.

The fifth (and hopefully last) post on this topic has some charts and data from running with Intel Speedstep off.  Go to part 5 to read this..

I promise at least one photo per post for your entertainment!

Here's one on my CPU opened showing the water cooling unit on the CPU (bottom right) with the old PSU: