Random Crashes - RAM or PSU?

saintly

saintly

saintly

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Joined
26 Sep 2005
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240
I have been having some crashes in game - "???.exe. has encountered a problem and needs to close". This is mainly in Prey and Quake4, after replacing my 7800 GT with an X1900XT and doing a clean install.

1st thing I tried was getting rid of my overclock (A64 4000+ clocked to 2.88 GHz) back to stock. The problem was still there. I then tried changing my RAM to a more laid back command rate of 2T. This seemed to solve things and all was fine. SO I thought it was my RAM.

So I set my RAM to 1T again and ran memtest for 10 passes and it passed fine (nearly 3 hours).

Could it be that the problem lies with my PSU and components are failing due to poor voltage supply when EVERYHTHING is under load, ie in games. My overclock always primed fine (14 hours). The PSU is a TG480-u01, which has 28A on 12V rail. The only reason I suspect this is because the X1900XT states 30A on 12V as a minimum.

Thoughts?
 
If the only change between a stable machine and a crashing one is the addition of a more power hungry vid card then I would suspect the PSU@480W is struggling to cope. If your machine crashes ONLY when using games and thus stressing the GPU and drawing more current form PSU, the PSU is the first component I would suspect.

You could try lowering the 3D clocks of the card below normal 3D speed using a 3rd party utility. CCC overdrive seems to have a minimum 3D clock that = the default 3D clocks.

If the PC is stable in 3D games when your vidcard is underclocked, and thus drawing less current. Then it would indicate an inadequate PSU. If you can borrow a more powerful PSU 550W+ and everything is stable at default clocks. This would confirm the theory of an inadequate PSU.
 
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