New pc crashing

Quillian

Quillian

Quillian

Associate
Joined
5 Jun 2006
Posts
39
My friend recently bought components for a pc on this site,
we set it up, and the pc works fine on the desktop but not when playing games- here is the spec:

AM2 Athlon 3000
MSI K9n Neo-F 550 motherboard
HIS Excalibur X1800 GTO
seagate barracude 120gb
samsung original 1gb ddr2 5300 (1gb stick)
Antec sonata 2 with 450 psu

The pc seems unstable for some reason when playing games.
We played bf2 singleplayer for 10-15 minutes - and it crashed to desktop
then rebooted. We immediately ran the game again, and it ran for 3 minutes before crashing. We ran it again...and it ran for 30 seconds.
Sometimes it only crashes to desktop - sometimes it just reboots - sometimes both. We figured it might be overheating,
but the cpu temp never really goes much above 45 and the system temp never much over 30.
The graphics card temp never got over 1 quarter of the way in the Catalyst control center display.

Is there any way we can better diagnose what component is messing up? could it be a software problem?
thanks
 
Quillian said:
My friend recently bought components for a pc on this site,
we set it up, and the pc works fine on the desktop but not when playing games- here is the spec:

AM2 Athlon 3000
MSI K9n Neo-F 550 motherboard
HIS Excalibur X1800 GTO
seagate barracude 120gb
samsung original 1gb ddr2 5300 (1gb stick)
Antec sonata 2 with 450 psu

The pc seems unstable for some reason when playing games.
We played bf2 singleplayer for 10-15 minutes - and it crashed to desktop
then rebooted. We immediately ran the game again, and it ran for 3 minutes before crashing. We ran it again...and it ran for 30 seconds.
Sometimes it only crashes to desktop - sometimes it just reboots - sometimes both. We figured it might be overheating,
but the cpu temp never really goes much above 45 and the system temp never much over 30.
The graphics card temp never got over 1 quarter of the way in the Catalyst control center display.

Is there any way we can better diagnose what component is messing up? could it be a software problem?
thanks
Click to expand...

Does it only do it on that game??

When things like that happen to me I tend to look towards the PSU

Stelly
 
No, it does it on all games...
i figured it might be the PSU - it cost £65 for the antec sonata case AND 450 powersupply - £60 tends to be the cost of a powersupply of that voltage anyway - too good to be true???
is there any way of telling if its the PSU? the voltage monitor doesnt set off any alarms or anything... although i havent looked at the voltages yet.

EDIT: how do i go about getting it RMA'ed? I assume I would NEED to send the case back? would they let me return it?
 
Sometimes it only crashes to desktop - sometimes it just reboots
Click to expand...

have you checked event manager to see what error msg ** getting?

right click my computer, then click on manage, then click on event viewer on the left hand side then click on system on the right hand side...

If there are no errors it could be a driver issue? or a connection prob? is the card in the correct slot?

it seems 450w psu would be ok....
 
The event manager doesnt seem to be showing anything that looks particularly relevant...what do you mean by the card in the correct slot - the graphics card?
what sort of drivers would need updating? the motherboard is Am2 - only just come out so i dont imagine there would be new drivers for it- its got the newest catalyst drivers, and all games patched...i dunno
 
Bumpety bump -
Ok... I just tried a different PSU, a hyper type-r 580.
The problem is still there, so it cant be the power supply, also formatted,
reinstalled windows and all the drivers and its still crashing, so I dont think its drivers or anything. I recon its the graphics card, we also had some moments where the monitor lost the signal yet the computer was still running the game and then it would crash. Surely it cant be anything else other than the graphics card if its not the PSU? 450 should be able to run it...
Is it worth getting an RMA?
 
Those Smartpower PSUs that come with the Sonata II are pretty good, I've built a few big systems into these cases and they run nicely. If I was you I would be running a memory check right now - download the bootable CD or floppy version of memtest86 (Google it) and run it for a few passes.

If any errors in red show up, then that's probably your culprit. Other than that, check that you have the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard, gfx card etc. Hope this helps.
 
Hi, I had the EXACT problem which I logged here on OC forum. Over the period of a month I replaced everything apart from my CPU. I even got my mate to try my gfx card in his system. Low and behold, I found out two weeks after that he only install the card ran it for ten minutes and took it out.

Cut a long story short, it was the graphics card. Do a search on Galaxy 6600GT and that was the card I had the problem with at that time. I could never get to run 3DMark03 all the way through.

I'm my experienced opinion of the identical problem, I'd get the gfx card checked thoroughly and replaced.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom