Pc Total Lock Up

[firewallblocked]

Not really much a pc gamer I tend to spend most time fixing viruses, trojans, data recovery etc for friends.

System is an:

Asus A8V-VM SE (DFI Lanparty before same results)
Athlon 64 3500
Geforce 7600gt
OcUK Huntkey 450W PSU
1GB Crucial memory (tried 2X 512Mb same results)

I have played Fear on this system for over an hour and no problem, the 7600gt may slow at times due to being a little underpowered for Fear on max settings but no lock ups.

I have checked everything I can think of and even with new motherboard & memory warcraft is still a problem.

I think it MAY be the cpu as this is from a friend but hasn't been a problem in anything other than Warcraft. Is it possible I could play Fear for over an hour and yet Warcraft crash in 5 mins?

I have heard updates for warcraft MAY cause the problem. Could it be one of their updates? If not CPU is it an Nvidia driver problem I'm stuck for ideas.

 

[Pulsar_GTI]

Check the temps of gfx card and cpu when playing .. overheating could be causing the lock ups?

 

[malccy]

Suggest also running memetest.

 

[firewallblocked]

Thanks for your replies, haven't been online since my post. Oops!

Tried memtest and it did appear to be fine. Didn't appear to be overheating as it would happen within in 5 mins or take much longer and the game Fear caused no lockups. Tried different memory and still lockups and it's crucial memory not the cheap stuff.

With regards to the cpu I believe it may the problem as the previous owner did overclock and I have my doubts to how stable it may be. The only thing is why doesn't it crash when playing Fear even on max settings.

I have read that memory controller for the Athlon 64 is on the cpu. I keep thinking that it may be a memory related problem caused by the cpu.

When my mate next brings his system round (shouldn't be long Warcraft withdraw is quite serious ) I will run memtest overnight and see if it fails since I last ran it.

Many Thanks.