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So, I've been doing some trouble-shooting of my PC and happened to notice on the intel site that they i3 2120 that I run only supports up to 1333 ram. I'm currently running 8gb of 1600 ram. Could that cause a conflict in my system or hurt the CPU or impair performance?

It's probably just running your memory at the slower speed it supports.

Get CPU-Z (a small computer info program) and check the memory tab. Multiply the DRAM Frequency by 2 to figure out what speed your RAM is running. If it is higher than rated speed and CAS timing it may be causing issues, if so you could go in to the BIOS to set things up properly - however if BIOS settings are already on auto it's probably running at a standard lower speed like FuturePastNow says. If the speed and timings are within the memory ratings, you can eliminate the memory as a problem by running Vista/Win 7's built-in memory diagnostic or MemTest86 (you can download the latter.)

At the same time, just because the CPU only officially supports a certain memory speed doesn't mean that it can't work with a faster memory speed.

Bios had it runninga at 1600 I noticed, so I've got it down to 1333 now. Could the running @ 1600 have damaged anything? It was like for a good while.

It won't damage anything, but it will cause instability. After lowering the speed through the BIOS, you should run something like Prime95 to see if you have any crashes occur.

Its really going to depend on what sort of issues you were having and what were presenting. This might be a symptom that is unrelated to memory timings, but you have started in the right place. Another thing to check is the volage of your memory. 1.5v is just about universal for Intel mobos.

Ok, I'll try that out. I do know for sure the ram is good (or at least should be...I ran Memtest86+ overnight no issues).

The main thing I'm trying to figure out is a graphics related problem actually, but this came up and I thought I better track it down separately.

Main graphics issue is over here : viewtopic.php?f=3&t=78835

Voltage was on auto, and going a bit high. I've got it set to 1.54 or something close in the BIOS. Bios won't let me set a flat 1.5v