970a ds3

[benmcknz]

I have been having problems with my screen going slightly darker and the sound changing to a higher pitch and now i went into the bios to disable on board sound i noticed my ram was set to 1333 so i changed it back 1866 my rams speed and i got an overclocking failure i feel my board is dead but am reluctant to fork out for a 990 fx mobo.
Thanks ben

[JGB123]

Which revision do you have?

GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket AM3+ - GA-970A-DS3 (rev. 3.0)
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4385#ov

What's the make & model # of the power supply? Have you tried a different AC outlet? (I actually encountered random P/S behaviour due to a wonky AC outlet once.)

Which processor are you using?

Are you overclocking?

Have you gone into the BIOS (or UEFI) and chosen 'Load Fail-Safe Defaults'

What make and amount of RAM and how many DIMMs?

Which OS version?

What's the make and model of the graphics card? Does it have HDMI sound?

How old is the motherboard's battery?

Have you tried unplugging the A.C. from the power supply and clearing the CMOS?

--

Providing details will help others to help you. :-)

--

Have you tried booting an Ubuntu Live DVD to get a 'second opinion'?

Choose:

"ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso"

Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (Trusty Tahr)
http://releases.ubuntu.com/trusty/

Best free download manager for Windows 7 at DuckDuckGo
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Best+free+download+manager+for+Windows+7

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https://duckduckgo.com/?q=How+to+check+an+md5sum+in+Windows+7

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https://duckduckgo.com/?q=How+to+burn+an+.iso+in+Windows+7

Alternately:

How to make a bootable Ubuntu USB installer in Windows 7 at DuckDuckGo
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=How+to+make+a+bootable+Ubuntu+USB+installer+in+Windows+7

UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

[JGB123]

Brightness and sound intermitently change.
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,15063.0.html

The link in the OP is to a thread with lots of info on the do's & don't's of overclocking motherboards sporting a variety of VRM configurations:

Motherboard Safety with 125W+ TDP processors
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,15142.0.html