Time to unlurk now and see if anyone knows what went wrong I guess. So I built a new system after my laptop died, and amongst the various bits and pieces I've ended up with:
MSI Z77 MPower (I just now realized the pun in mpower...)
Intel i7 3770K
Corsair... *ahem*... 'CMX8GX3M2A2000C9' 2x4GB...