I'm having an interesting problem with my recent Core i7 Digital Audio workstation build that I am curious to see if others have encountered. First, here are the specs on the machine.

ASUS P6TD Deluxe Intel X58 Socket LGA1366 MB Intel Core i7-950 3.06Ghz 8M LGA1366 CPU CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB

Plus a couple ASUS optical drives and a 750W Corsair PSU. Running Windows 7 x64.

All this is connected to the nefarious Digi 002 firewire audio interface for use with Pro Tools. I following mostly the specs posted by many other I7 users in the digidesign community who pooled their collective knowledge in this thread.

Now after completing my build, I fell victim to the "UD5 squeal" described at that forum thread. So taking the advice posted, I disabled c1e advanced halt state and Intel speed stepping (I would likely have done this anyway to maintain a stable clock, power consumption isn't really a relevant concern on this machine.)

I enabled XMP to set the ram timings properly as well.

What I am experiencing is a BSOD upon shutdown, but only immediately after windows fully exits and ends all processes. The error is a MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION 0x000000. The funny thing is that it is extremely intermitent and only occurs if the shutdown immediately followed a period of relative idleness. It does not a generate a minidump, I suspect because windows monitoring has terminated by the time this error occurs. No damage is evident and one can simply turn off manually and the system will act as though a proper shutdown had occurred. If anything it is a annoyance, I just want to be certain it is not affecting my long term stability.

I have read that the i7 950 does not like DRAM voltages past 1.65, but that they are acceptable if they are within .5 of the BLCK setting. I have tried disabling XMP and setting all timings to auto and the problem still manifests in an identical way. It is suspect that the cpu idleness preceding shutdown is the determining factor, as both c1e and speedstepping are both settings intended to modify handling of this state.

Any suggestions or prior experiences would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: The behavior very closely resembles what's described in this thread: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/12003-63-shut-problem-windows

The benign nature of it of is identical. I can't seem to download the hotfix cited there however.