Rebooting PC - New Build

stoofa · 28 Feb 2007 at 14:04

A little while ago I finished building my wife's PC.
For the first time since I can remember I appear to have an unstable machine and I'm not quite sure where to look for the fault - so I thought I'd throw it open to the floor.
The machine in question is built of:

Antec NSK6500 Case
Antec 430w PSU (Came with the case)

Intel 965 Motherboard (Intel Brand - DQ965GF I think)
Core 2 Duo 6400 (2.13Ghz)
2GB (2x 1GB Kingston Value)
Pallit (OEM) GeForce 7900GS
CL Zi-Fi Extreme Music
Seagate SATA 320GB HD
Samsung SATA DVD-RW

Vista Ultimate 32bit

I finished building the machine into her old case and she reported that it was rebooting now and again for no reason.
Turned out as soon as she was trying anything remotely graphical it was falling over.
She'd be listening to iTunes, fire up a Java game and it would fall over.
Her old case had an Enermax Noise Taker 375w PSU and I was told there was a good chance it was a PSU issue - the 7900GS recommending a 400w.

So, purchased the Antec case on "This Week Only" as it was a good price and came with what I was told wasn't a bad Antec 430w PSU.
This seemed to fix the issue for about 3-4 days and now we seem to have the problem back again.

Ran Memtest and that looped through all tests 4 times without an error.
It just seems entirely random as to when it happens.
GF 7900GS fan is working fine, as is large fan at back of Antec case and PSU fan.
Could it still be a PSU issue?
I asked on these forums and was told that the 430w should be OK for the above setup.
I do have a spare 7800GTX graphics card - do they have slightly lower power requirements and if so maybe worth doing that swap?

Any other ideas?

Ta

Voo · 28 Feb 2007 at 14:14

Using latest Vista compatible gfx drivers?

I'm not clued up on Vista so don't know how things work in comparison to XP.

melbourne720 · 28 Feb 2007 at 14:17

7900 GS only uses up 45W under load, so I'd be loathed to put it down to that.

Memory sounds okay. Could try it with only one stick, but then if memtest said it was good it is probably good.

How much voltage is going to the CPU - is it, or the RAM (or FSB) overclocked at all? How about the GFX card?

Finally, do you have the latest gfx card drivers, as the ones that came with it will be no good for Vista.

jimbos · 28 Feb 2007 at 14:56

I had a similar problem with my set up when i recently built it.

It would run fine in windows and running basic apps (win media player) but when I started up any more power hungry apps, it would turn off and re boot.

Problem = my heat sink wasnt connected properly to the cpu, meaning it was wildly overheating, and the bios was set for it to shut down at what would be considered a high temp.

My advice would be to re seat the heatsink and fan on your cpu and see if that does anything.

Arakarth · 28 Feb 2007 at 15:45

I too have a 7900GS, the gainward golden sample 256mb version, and I also get system reboots for apparently no reason and I have a 600W Seasonic S12 PSU, so i can't imagine it could be anything to do with insufficient power.

stoofa · 1 Mar 2007 at 01:47

Thanks for the posts.
The machine is running totally at stock.
It is a Core 2 so of course it's just asking to be overclocked, but I like to get a machine running stable at stock first before I play around with it.

Heat was really the only thing I could think of too.
The bundle I purchased came with the Core 2 and heatsink/fan already attached to the motherboard and I'll admit I didn't pay them too much attention when I fitted them.
I think I'll monitor the temperature closely and maybe even just bite the bullet and take a closer look.

I've heard of the 7900GS cards sometimes being a general pain.
The name on this particular card is "Pallit" - which I think OcUK sold as their own brand.
If I can't see any issue with the heatsink/fan on the CPU I'll drop the 7800GTX in and see if that makes anything more stable.

Cheers.