Strange PC problem, any ideas?

Lateuk

Lateuk

Lateuk

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Joined
30 Jun 2005
Posts
113
Hello,
For the last 4 months my PC has been behaving a bit strange, during games at random times the PC will completely power off in XP, i get problems running the same games in Vista but i dont get the power off, just a dead crash. After reboot i get a blue screen of death in XP every time i try and boot until i have removed power. Then the PC boots as normal.

I have replaced the GFX card (because i has a spare) and it wasnt that. I have also tried with standard CPU and RAM settings (no overclocking) with no improvement.

My spec is:
ABit AN8 SLI board
AMD 939 X2 3800+ at 2.5G
2G DDR 800 Corsair Ram.
600w Seasonic PSU
SB Audigy

Any ideas?

Thanks
 
sounds like the psu. But thats very strange for a 600w seasonic psu.

Download the full version of 3d mark 06 and use that to stress it out. It will run through many simulations taking about 15 minutes and it will stress out the gpu and cpu a lot. One of the simulations runs a game solely on the cpu and really stresses it out.

Depending where it crashs it will help you fine tune your search. If it crashs the moment the graphics card gets stressed out it could be either the graphics card or a power issue. Seens as youve already changed the graphics card then it would most likely be a power issue, but like is said above its very strange for a seasonic.
 
It could also be memory problem try ether checking it with mem test software or perhaps using 1 stick at a time.Also check for Hardrive errors to rule that out.
If Ram, PSU, Graphics all check out ok
then it could be theres a fault on your mobo.
 
clear your event logs and then wait for it to crash again, go check event logs and see what error you get. Could help a bit.

ColiN

Right click MY COMPUTER > Manage > Events.. incase you didnt know where it was :)
 
I have now excluded the video card (as i changed it) the OS build and Hard Drive (as it does it in both XP and Vista on separate hard drives).

I believe that leaves the:

PSU
RAM
MB
CPU

I am just downloading 3D Mark to see if i can make it fail with that.

Another odd thing was one time this happened my BIOS settings got wiped!?
 
my bios has cleared its self before after a few unsucessful boots. Make sure your ram voltage is back up to what it should be, either 2v or 2.1v

Also make sure you take note of which simulation kills the pc.
 
I cannot get it to crash using 3d MArk 2006, ran the tests 5 times with no problems. But still crashes at random in Crysis, Bioshock and World in Conflict. Very Strange.
 
Run orthos on it and see if it crashes then, use the blend test as it gets the most heat out of your CPU. If its heat related make sure you give your whole computer a damn good clean out! Had to do the same thing on my A8N board with X1900XTX which I gave to my dad after around 8 months of use due to the amount of gunk on the fans and on the heatsinks.
 
Ok i have run Orthos for 3 hours with no problems. I have also cleared the event logs and ran Crysis which ran for about 5 mins then the PC powered off. The event logs showed nothing at the time of the crash.

Looking at the temps of my CPU it never gets above 70C even under massive stress, i am going to clean my case out of dust etc and see if that helps.

I have 4 case fans so i really dont think it's an overheating issue.

I am starting to think its a MB or PSU issue, but never seen anything like this before.
 
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I am running Core Temp now and i see 1 core hitting a max of 57C and the other hitting 78C at full load. Is this too high? Could this be the problem?
 
and you havn't thought maybe your pc is crashing because youve taken it from 2ghz to 2.5? they do sometimes g o like this after years. Take it down to stock and see if it fixs the problems. 70 degrees is really hot for a 2.5ghz dont you have a 3rd party heat sink on it? How hot cvan these thinsg go anyway?
 
I have had the hover out and gave it a propper clean out, but even at stock now i see the same issues even though temperatures are far lower?
 
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