Computer freezes after ~20 minutes of gaming

andy_mk3

andy_mk3

andy_mk3

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It happens in BF:BC2 mostly, but it's also happened in COD4, it will be fine then after 20 minutes or so, the screen will freeze, and the sound goes to a constant 'duuuuuur', the system wont respond to anything so I have to shut it down.

Things I know of:
- CPU not overheating, has been reseated with IC Diamond, reaches about 65c tops.
- Overclock isn't causing the problem, I have reset the BIOS and ran everything at stock with no change at all.
- Power supply is good, Corsair HX-520.
- Graphics card not overheating, I thought this was the issue so replaced my 8800GT with a HD6950, the problem is exactly the same however.
- Windows not causing a problem, tonight I have formatted the system, W7 SP1 installed, latest drivers for everything including chipset are installed.
- CPU passes IBT without a problem.
- Memory is good, zero errors after 11 hours of memtest86.
utf-8BSU1HLTIwMTExMDA2LTAwMDUwLmpwZw.jpg


I'm stumped now really, the only possible cause left now is the mobo, which is an Asus P5K Deluxe. After a reboot this is the message I get:

981fc5e8.png


Which isn't of any use at all really. Only thing I can think of doing is perhaps re-seating the NB/SB heatsinks as they could possibly be overheating?

Any suggestions please? :( Thanks.

(Spec is in sig, bar the 8800GT).
 
have you used driver cleaner to get rid of all the 8800 stuffs as when i had this problem it was an nvidia driver issue giving me the 124 error
 
As Cupra said. The 124 error seems to point towards a display driver issue. I realise however you said you switched over from your 8800GT to the 6950 because of the issue. Which of course means you were receiving the error before you swapped cards... so it can't be an Nvidia to ATI issue can it?

You also mentioned you formatted. So it's certainly not going to be a driver mis match issue.

Other things I would be trying:

1.Run a diagnostic test on your hard drive (these cause blue screens an awful lot and are overlooked so often)

2. Try a spare PSU (just in case!!!)

N.B. I doubt very much it's a chipset or heat related issue. I wouldn't waste time and effort on that.
 
derv said:
BCCode 124 means you need a bit more VCore.
Click to expand...

Thats what I thought when i saw that, but he said he has tried running at stock with the same issues. So, unless he has a bad chip, which could also be the case.

Is it just gaming what causes the freeze up?
 
if its just started has anything on the system changed recently ?

noticed the o/c was listed as 3.4 with 1.27v, via cpu-z etc are you noticing a vcore drop when under load ?
 
derv said:
BCCode 124 means you need a bit more VCore.
Click to expand...

Well I have tried upping the vcore as I read that elsewhere, but it shouldn't need more vcore at stock on auto.

Deception said:
Thats what I thought when i saw that, but he said he has tried running at stock with the same issues. So, unless he has a bad chip, which could also be the case.

Is it just gaming what causes the freeze up?
Click to expand...

Yeah, just gaming, I don't play all that many games so BF and COD are the only one's I've had it happen in so far.

mp260767 said:
if its just started has anything on the system changed recently ?

noticed the o/c was listed as 3.4 with 1.27v, via cpu-z etc are you noticing a vcore drop when under load ?
Click to expand...

A very slight drop to about 1.24v, so nothing really. I left it running prime for a couple of hours last night without an issue.


Buchanan0204 said:
As Cupra said. The 124 error seems to point towards a display driver issue. I realise however you said you switched over from your 8800GT to the 6950 because of the issue. Which of course means you were receiving the error before you swapped cards... so it can't be an Nvidia to ATI issue can it?

You also mentioned you formatted. So it's certainly not going to be a driver mis match issue.

Other things I would be trying:

1.Run a diagnostic test on your hard drive (these cause blue screens an awful lot and are overlooked so often)

2. Try a spare PSU (just in case!!!)

N.B. I doubt very much it's a chipset or heat related issue. I wouldn't waste time and effort on that.
Click to expand...

One reason why I thought to re-format was to clear out all old drivers and have all the lasstest ones installed.

So I'll so a full scan on the hard drive, I don't have a spare PSU with PCI-E power outputs unfortunately though.

Thanks for your replies!

Edit: Just to add, I left Furmark and Prime95 running for a while without any issues. I thought stressing both at the same time may produce an error, but no :(

Edit2: Samsung ESTOOLS error test just completed, 0 errors found!

Edit3: Ok, so I decided to do a full system rebuild.

First thing I noticed that the board appears to be bent under the VRM heatsink? there was a slight gap between a couple of them in the middle
7ca861de.jpg


I took the heatsink off and put a few small drops of superglue (*****, i know) on them, and that sits on thre fine now.

I took out the memory, blew out the slots with compressed air, and everything ok there.

Took off the heatsink for the CPU, old paste coverage
a8c0991d.jpg


Not too bad, cleaned it all off, removed CPU to check pins for damage or signs or bad connections, all appears fine, again blown out with compressed air
4b2c75e8.jpg


CPU and cooler all cleaned off, nice blob of IC Diamond applied to the middle and re-assembled
1c46fe60.jpg


All back together now (cable management can wait :o)
c40ba18a.jpg


Reset BOIS again, fired up BF:BC2, 20 minutes later..

 
Last edited:
what the hell is the noise :D

do the nb/sb/vram get hot at all ?

daft question, but have you tried going on a server, hid away and done nothing, just wondered if it throws a wobbler as well.
 
Last edited:
That's the noise from the speakers!

I put my hand on all the heatsinks as soon as it freezes and none feel worryingly hot.

I'll give that a try tho :)
 
Check Power options and make sure nothing is set to turn off after a certain time period, like Hard drives etc (trying to think of anything that hasn't been tried to bare with me! :D) Also try GPU in other PCI-E slot
 
Deception said:
Check Power options and make sure nothing is set to turn off after a certain time period, like Hard drives etc (trying to think of anything that hasn't been tried to bare with me! :D) Also try GPU in other PCI-E slot
Click to expand...

Ok, everything in power options set to 'Never', and GPU fitted to bottom slot, still exactly the same :(

Buchanan0204 said:
This is a real pain in the backside eh? (Can I say the four letter word beginning with A and ending in E?)
Click to expand...

Sure is!

I don't know what to look at next really, I don't want to start throwing money at it replacing parts just yet.
 
Try playing on a non punkbuster server for a while.

Do you run MSI afterburner, gpu-z or any graphics card temperature/clock monitoring software whilst gaming in BC2?
 
Tealc said:
Try playing on a non punkbuster server for a while.

Do you run MSI afterburner, gpu-z or any graphics card temperature/clock monitoring software whilst gaming in BC2?
Click to expand...

Ok I'll give that a go.

And I have done yes, Alt + tabbed onto them during gaming and it's all spot on.
 
andy_mk3 said:
Ok I'll give that a go.

And I have done yes, Alt + tabbed onto them during gaming and it's all spot on.
Click to expand...

Try closing all hardware monitoring programs and see what happens.

BC2 has a punkbuster issue (since march) that affects some who use hardware monitoring applications you see. The result. A hardware crash with looping sound and eventual blue screen.
 
I'm pretty sure I have played it without anything running in the background before and it made no difference.

What I don't get is that if I run Prime and Furmark it's absolutely fine, running both of those is going to pull a lot of power from the PSU and stress most components more than BF would, so is it a ahrdware or software issue? Like I said I don't really want to throw money at replacing the PSU or mobo.

I'll have to keep playing about with it and see what happens. It's going out the window soon!
 
Tealc said:
BC2 has a punkbuster issue (since march) that affects some who use hardware monitoring applications you see. The result. A hardware crash with looping sound and eventual blue screen.
Click to expand...

I think this may well be the answer, I just played a non-PB game which didn't crash for an hour, switched to a PB server and it crashed in around 15 minutes!
 
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