left it running with just the 3 sticks of ram in overnight so will see how it is when i get into work later. i have a feeling its not faulty ram but the type of ram. its supposed to be 1600MHz, which the gigabyte motherboard does not support, so i am thinking that the timings are just not working right. we have some 1333MHz ram so if the three sticks error then will stick them in as i ran the same type with my i7 build when i had it without issues.