Machine cutting out after 10-20 minutes - help

5tephen

5tephen

5tephen

Associate
Joined
16 Oct 2003
Posts
1,520
I built a decent-specced machine for a friend back in November - Gigabyte DS3, Core2Duo 6300 (not overclocked), 2x1Gb OCZ RAM, ATi x1950Pro, Enermax Liberty 520W, 2 Hitachi disks. After a few weeks the machine was cutting out after gaming for maybe 20 minutes, I turned up all the fans, put an extra fan in and took a backplate out of the back of the case to help the single-slot x1950 cooling. This seemed to work well, and there was a lot of heat being put out through the open backplate slot.

But now the machine is just dying after 10-15 minutes of even just web surfing or word processing. The gfx card fan goes to full speed and there is no output to the monitor. Plus it crashes to the point that not even holding in the power button (for ~5 seconds) switches it off - it has to be powered off at the switch. The thing is, I put in a brand new DS3, it now has Geil memory instead of OCZ, and I don't know what else could be wrong. Surely the 520W Enermax couldn't be bombing out?
Some have mentioned the VPU recover feature of ATi cards causing issues - surely this would only be a problem when putting the gfx card under stress? Suggestions would be appreciated.
 
Does sound like a dodgy PSU to me - any chance you can swap it out for another just to test it out?
 
A PSU is the only thing I don't have spare unless I take the 520W Enermax out of my own machine which has the cables all nicely tidied etc... but if it has to be tested, I will. Any other ideas, other people with similar issues in the past?
 
Just when you mention that, I might also re-seat the CPU cooler and re-apply the thermal paste - that was another thing I didn't try. Will let you know how I get on, but if there are any other things to try it would do no harm to give me your ideas :) Thanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom