New system cuts out after 10-15 mins of gaming

5tephen

5tephen

5tephen

Associate
Joined
16 Oct 2003
Posts
1,520
Building a pretty high-spec home PC for a business customer of mine and I've had to take it back because it is cutting out after a few minutes of gaming. When playing Far Cry for example - the CPU and gfx fans can both be heard getting louder, but then my display cuts off, the CPU fan still spins at a high speed (not full) but the graphics card fan spins up to full.
I can't even push the reset button on the case; I have to hold in the power button.
Brief specs:
Intel E6300 not overclocked
2x1Gb OCZ PC6400
Gigabyte DS3
X1950Pro not overclocked
Catalyst 6.11
Enermax Liberty 500W

Surely not a power problem is it? I've also upped the RAM voltage in the DS3 by +0.2v because I've heard of its undervolting problems.
Please help :(
 
Jihad said:
Anything to do with VPU?
Click to expand...

How would I test for that?
There's also a strange issue with the setup in that if I switch the PC on at the mains then push the power button, everything lights up for half a second then switches off, then powers up successfully after another second. Only happens when the plug is pulled. Is this bad, and/or related to the main problem?
 
5tephen said:
How would I test for that?
There's also a strange issue with the setup in that if I switch the PC on at the mains then push the power button, everything lights up for half a second then switches off, then powers up successfully after another second. Only happens when the plug is pulled. Is this bad, and/or related to the main problem?
Click to expand...
VPU is some kinda ATI related thing that can be enabled/disabled in the drivers (Think it's called VPU ain't had a ATI card in ages)
Anyway it used to cause problems sometimes I believe, only thing I can think off. :cool:
 
Is the VPU not an essential part of the graphics card's functioning?
Also, I've narrowed it down to the graphics card. Ran Prime95 (CPU stress and RAM stress tests separately) and they went ok for a good while. Ran ATi Tray Tools' overclocking function and it crashed about 5 minutes into it in exactly the same fashion as above. Does this give any pointers?
 
Reseating the GPU heatsink will invalidate your warranty. What is the temperature of the GPU as shown on the Ati Try Tool?? Idle temp should be between 50-60C while the load temp can get up to 90C+ with stock heatsink and thermal paste.

Also I think he was talking about the VPU recovery, a unique ATi feature where the driver resets the card if any instability / malfunction is detected, and yes a lot of people are having trouble with this feature so I'd try turning it off first.

Also try turning off catalyst AI (automatic optimisations for games) and see if that helps.
 
The way you describe it - It definitely sounds like a heat issue.

Can you run a temp monitoring program whilst in game, and after a few mins check the temps?

Over 60 degrees on CPU - Not good.
Over 90 degrees on GFX card - Not good.
(Although I know some that run around 100 degrees at stock. 0_o )
 
check the mobo is not shorting, i assume its isntalled properly on risers.

start disconnecting items from the PC. begin with trying a different ram stick.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom