Although I'm fairly certain it has nothing to do with Slack, I have to ask.

Did any of you had any problems with running Slackware with quoad-core processors?

My box, runs fine when no heavy tasks are running, but freezes when something "difficult" is assigned to it.

Examples, that shouldn't pose any problem, but they do:

Copying a large number of small files to external USB disk freezes the box. Large files are OK.

Running a heavy computational (i.e. CPU and RAM almost no disk) task along with normal operations, freezes randomly, but task does not run for long. The task I'm referring to is Folding@Home single CPU client.

Other configuration stuff that may by useful:
- Stock kernel
- closed nVidia drivers

If lightweiht tasks are executed, no problem. Box stays up "forever".

I think the problem is hardware related, but I thought I'd check it with you first.

I've been running a core2duo quad core for some time now (had 12.2 installed on it). I've never had any problems like that. Maybe an I/O problem with your drive(s)? What kind of hdd's do you have installed?

I also have a Core 2 quad and there are no crashes or freezes during high CPU usage.

However, while playing games, the computer can crash if I don't underclock the GPU ... this may be due to nvidia drivers, I also have to test it with the latest drivers to be sure. This is the only way my computer will crash.

I run memtest86 to the box and the single CPU test was passed with flying colors.

The bad news are, that when I tried to run the (experimental)multi-CPU memtest86.3.5 test, the test did not even started. The box freezed immediately.

So it's not the RAM.

I have two SATA HDDs on it, one (kinda old)80GB and another 1.5TB(less than 6mo old). Probably they have different SATA requirements.
Can this be the root of the problem?

I guess it is a hardware problem, and it's the motherboard. I had freezes like this, and the last time it frozen, my motherboard went out.
There were inflated capacitors... so check your motherboard for inflated capacitors.

Yes, it feels like a hardware problem.

You mean I should physically check the M/B for inflated capacitors?

BTW, how does an inflated capacitor looks like?
Does it smell plastic (not joking)?

I started the box with "maxcpus=1" kernel parameter and as was expected nothing bad happenned.

I rebooted with "maxcpus=2" and again nothing bad happened. No freezes no nothing, everything was smooth.

What do you make of it?
Is the M/B to blame or do I have a faulty processor?

Err... it's a normal capacitor, but inflated.
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/sujet-1806...board-inflated That's a proof of the results

Booting with "maxcpus=2" took care of all the problems I was having.

It doesn't actually solves the problem, it work around it...

Anyway, I am convinced it is not a Slackware problem, so I'm marking this thread as SOLVED.