PC crashes ... which bit of hardware is causing it

[Nemeses]

OK I can run the PC fine watch movies anything no crashed but when I play any game ..lets Take Fallen earth or Lotro, the PC will crash to a grayish screen.

Not all the time but often, I can play lotro for a couple hours in the evening and its fine next day it will crash within 5 Min's of playing.

Fallen earth makes it crash a lot more not got passed 10 minutes of the game yet.

I have used passmark, Intel burntest and ATITools to stress different parts of the PC but never crashes (used Intel burn test as it creates more heat then prime)

Temps at normal around the 30°C on CPU and maxed at 50°C under load
Motherboard averages around 45, and did not change under stress test.

Most times the screen it crashes to is just gray with lines (looks a bit like corduroy trousers

sometimes its a dark blueish black screen ( not a clear blue one BSOD) and the game sound though not right is in some ways still kinda there in a screechy kinda way

Have a C2D 6600
P5W DH Deluxe Mother Board
4850 GFX
4 GIG RAM Corsair XMS2 cm2x 1024-6400
PSU Propower 450W
XP Vista 64 bit (also crashed on the 32 bit version as well)

Things I have also tried.

Disconnect all optical drives removed two sticks of ram (trying to cut down on power) but still crashes

Have all the latest drivers installed including latest bios.

Just gave it another try, game ran a bit longer (fallen earth) before it crashed maybe 10/15 Min's, screen this time went black, but sound was fine for maybe a minute then the whole PC crashed as per norm.

This is what makes me think its the graphics card, but I'm not sure

Edit was to add Ram (make and model)

 

[Nemeses]

If it only crashes in a particular game and nothing else i'd say it was a driver issue, if it happens in other games as well i would say the gpu is faulty. I'd find it difficult to believe it was any other hardware causing the problem. Is the game fully patched and up to date as well?

Crashes in 2 games as above Lotro and Fallen earth and yes games are fully up to date ( they both MMo's) ..driving me bloody nutty.

Added

Have just run Mem test bout a hours worth no errors

Cheers for reply

 

[Nemeses]

try the card in a different machine , this will narrow it down to either the card or something in your machine , psu, motherboard/chipset,drivers etc.

Not really got another machine to test it on I'm about the only one of me mates who is into PC's.

Just ran 3DMark06 and when it got to the high end graphics part, PC fell over

 

[Nemeses]

Bump no one? scratching head here

 

[Nemeses]

Sounds like GPU to me. Only crashing in games when the GPU is under load.

Any chance you can lend a GPU to try, at least it would rule it out if nothing else.

Think every mate I have who has a PC at home they all still have AGP cards ..been round looking

anyone know a decent program to use to test GPU temps?

 

[Nemeses]

How old is the PSU? It could be that it's not giving enough juice when GPU is under load. Can you try a different one?

PSU is maybe 15/18 months old max.
otherones I have are pretty crap ..or dead

 

[Nemeses]

Either GPU or PSU. I've never heard of "propower" and I dont trust it, but it's just me, I'm totally against any PSUs that are cheaper than 35quid for a small one.

Try checking voltages if they're in range.

Also this might be quite silly but if you have any free partitions or external hdd - try installing fresh copy of windows and see if it works there ; ).

On the other side I had similar problems in past and it turned out to be GPU heat issue mostly, so get ati tools or riva tuner and bump up your fan speed and check if that helps as well.

Power supply was in the £50 quid range and this is a new windows installation

 

[Nemeses]

try going into bios and set your (cant think of the name, someone will know) from 100 to 101

Thanks will give it a go, erm been bloody saying wrong PSU the whole time (loosing me mind I think) its a X Power 450 ..as follows

X Power
ATX 450TD

AC Input |230Vac| 50Hz|5A|

DC Output |+3.3|+5|+12|-5 |+ 5 |-12|-5vsb|

Max A |32A|34A|18A|1A|1A|2A|

Max 450W

 

[Nemeses]

My whole PC was randomly freezing and crashing, even idle. Often to a blank colour screen with vertical lines, like you describe. Bought new memory, and that seems to have fixed my random crashes. Still get the odd VPU recover, but I'll put that down to drivers or the powerplay kicking around the GPU clocks... :-/

edit: I suppose if you're only crashing under load, and never at idle, I guess it's more likely the GPU at fault, perhaps the GPU memory? My dodgy system ram must have been causing my GPU to crash in the same way?

Yup never crashes when I'm surfing, or watching movies, funny enough got it to run 3dmark06 today, was very dodgy at the high end graphic part screen got very pixel-ed with lines running crossway's through screen with blocks in the middle of the lines

 

[Nemeses]

Its funny this problem I can play lotro for quite a while and no crashes been on there about 2 hours this morning, but FE would not last 5 minutes

 

[Nemeses]

Just a update to those who offered advice it turned out to be the graphic card, installed a 3870 and ran fine, Fallen earth 1 hour no problems cruised through 3DMark06.

Thanks for the advice, will but a new 280 in the new year I think.