Team Fortress 2 randomly restarts, low voltages, time to change PSU?

jon86 · 6 Dec 2008 at 23:48

Hi.

I have recently installed a slightly uprated graphics card (6800GT from 6800) and am finding that my computer will randomly restart when I am playing Team Fortress 2. Sometimes it will restart after 10 minutes and sometimes after 30 or 40. I Googled the problem on the 'net and it appears that it might be down to my PSU.

My system specs are as follows:
DFi Infinity nForce 3 250Gb
AMD 3500) NC single core 939
1GB OCZ DDR400 RAM
80GB Seagate 7200.7
Leadtek nVidia 6800GT
MSI DVD/CDRW
120mm Panaflow L1A CPU fan
5 80mm case fans
Akasa PaxPower 460W PSU

SpeedFan logs that temps are fine but the voltages in Windows appear to be somewhat lacking...

-12V: -9.32V
+12V: 11.71V
-5V: -0.43V
+5V: 4.92V
+3.3V: 3.22V

I have set up logging for when I am in SpeedFan there doesn't seem to be any big spikes when the computer restarts (within the 3 seconds logging delay).

Do you think my PSU is not up to the job / old and tired / needs replacing?

If so, what would you recommend that is good and fairly cheap. I don't want to spend massive amount on this somewhat dated computer... I just want TF2 to work.

Thanks.
Jon

J.B · 7 Dec 2008 at 00:04

if youd of not put the voltages on Id say your GPU was over heating.

Since you have....your voltages are a little off, a 460w PSU would power that alright though. i guess its on its way out. Do you have a hardware monitor in the BIOS?

UberGT · 7 Dec 2008 at 00:11

sppedfan cant really be trusted when it comes to voltages, bios voltages will ony diplay idle volts so that wont help either i suggest you get a multi meter or try another power supply if you have one.

jon86 · 7 Dec 2008 at 00:14

Hmmm... I don't have either. The BIOS says roughly the same voltages at idle (e.g. +12V no higher than 11.7V). SpeedFan says the GPU stays around 40 - 45 and the heatsink only really feels slightly warm to the touch under full load.

UberGT · 7 Dec 2008 at 00:16

jon86 said:
Hmmm... I don't have either. The BIOS says roughly the same voltages at idle (e.g. +12V no higher than 11.7V). SpeedFan says the GPU stays around 40 - 45 and the heatsink only really feels slightly warm to the touch under full load.

are you running latest nvidia drivers?

jon86 · 7 Dec 2008 at 00:17

Latest nForce (from 2005) and latest Forceware graphics drivers, yes.

UberGT · 7 Dec 2008 at 11:52

Worth going down to the pruple shirt place and picking up a psu if it still does it you can always return it also try reseating your gpu, dowload HWmonitor aswell just to check your other system temps incase its something else.