Maximum PC

This doesn't really tell you if you have bad clusters or sectors, so go to the manufacture that made the drive and get the diagnostic software, make the cd using the image you downloaded and boot to it and run the 90 second test then the long test. The long test takes quite a while so go watch a movie or chase the girlfriend/wife.

Nasty...my friends didn't give me that name for nutin' ya know...

it sounds like the mobo design is faulty because if other people are havening the same issue running a different set up and the only thing common between the two is the mobo that only leaves the mobo itself being the issue so my advice is get a different mobo which from the sounds of it that will be the only way to fix it sorry dude you bought a faulty mobo which is apparently an issue with its design

Hmm... I will try the downclocking thing right now. Never thought to try that, since I was mainly under the impression that stock settings is generally the most stable. (I don't oc, so everything is set to stock speeds anyway)

i had something like that happen a while back, had a tech ( i.t at work) tell me i had a bad hdd, out of the box. and he replaced it.
took the pc home and it was still locking up and crashing when i was playing games, low load it was fine.
i looked at it my self, and it turned out to be a loose cpu cooler.
fixed that and the problem went away