WoW woes

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16 Jun 2010
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Hello all,

I'm not really sure if this would be the right place for this one, but here goes nonetheless. Like several of you here I am a keen WoW player and have purchased a PC from OCUK (last May). The PC itself is a Quad-core, with 4gb DDR2 RAM and a ATi 4800 series card (4870 I believe!). It has been one of the more temperemental Pc's I have owned. Voltage issues forced it to be sent back a couple weeks after delivery and early this year I had to send it back after the motherboard went and took out the GPU with it. OCUK have been very good in replacing stuff and I can't really fault them in this regard.

All was fine for about 5 months until now. This issue, which only appears to happen whilst I am playing WoW is near-replicatable. Every so often I get random "shutdowns" - this is not really the right term "blackouts" would be more appropriate. The system just goes poof as if I have pulled the power cord out (I have not). This usually occurs on the character selection screen if I go idle or AFK out of the game and I can replicate it within 2 minutes if I attempt to create a Deathknight character (a recent example). Very occasionally it happens whilst in game, usually in ICC25 on specific fights (Marrowgar, Saurfang) and one time it happened levelling my alt in Hellfire. It does not happen anywhere else and sometimes I can go for days without issues. The PC does not do this in any other programs (other games included) and can idle in Windows for days on end without any problems.

The performance of the system has been a little sluggish lately but nothing really majorly problematic.

What I have done: Numerous Spyware and virus scans with several difference programs (Avast!, Avira, Spybot, Super anti-spyware). nothing major picked up.

Memtest86: memory came back fine.

A good clean out: It's pretty clean in there. Capacitors on the motherboard and graphics card seemed fine and dust levels were not too bad. Phase LEDS on the motherboard sometimes go up to red on the boot up but I never have an issue booting.

Speedfan indicates temps around 35-40 idling and up to 60 when pushed for CPUs. Fans generally seem in working order.

Graphics drivers: updated to 10.5 and I have removed CCC.

Event Log does not appear to log specific issues after these blackouts.

I am really tearing my hair out now. I've done so much forum scanning to try and find comparable issues but either people don't have the same problem or the threads dwindle off without answer.

OCUK - you are my final hope! Thanks for your time.

Nathan.
 
Probably better in the hardware section rather than here tbh.

It does sound like a PSU issue to me..my brother in law has a 4870 1gb card and used to get horrible issues with WoW using a 600w Seasonic psu.

Changed to a Corsair 650w and all has been well since.
 
If a mod could move it to the Hardware section would very much appreciate it - I think I was gunning on the hope that it would be a driver complication or some such!

I've long suspected the PSU, and I don't think it was ever changed out when the system went back the two times I've sent it. What with the system being out of warranty and having sent it back two times already, the thought of more hardware issues does not make me feel all that great. I don't think I've got a powerful enough spare PSU to test this out. My current one is a 600W, however. I will definately look into perhaps purchasing a new one to test out - it would be worth the small cost.
 
Hey mate, is it a blue screen with shut down you are getting by any chance? or just random power offs like you say in your post.
 
Rufio said:
Hey mate, is it a blue screen with shut down you are getting by any chance? or just random power offs like you say in your post.
Click to expand...


Hi there. They are just the power offs. To be exact, there is no warning - the monitors will just go black and I can hear the usual "shutdown noises" coming from the case (hard drives, fans, etc). It does not try to restart itself or anything like that. I have to manually boot it back up.

I am getting a little worried because it cannot be good for some of the components at all. It has been occuring for at least the last month and a half on and off.

I cannot remember the last time I had a blue screen with this system (I think before I sent it back the first time).
 
I also think it's the PSU, see if you can borrow any mates PSU to try out, since your problem is repeatable.
 
I think my old PC has a 500W Tagan in it. Do you think it's worth popping that in or will some of the components in my new PC give it a hard time and risk further damage?

Thank you everyone for your help so far!
 
How very odd. A friend of mine, who also is a Warcraft player, has been having the exactly same difficulty - although his PC is completely different to yours. Randomly, his system will just power off when playing Warcraft. We put it down to a PSU issue as others have said in this thread, although possibily the motherboard. He needed an upgrade anyway so he bought a new motherboard, CPU, memory and power supply.

Obviously this won't help your problems at all, I just found it really strange to see someone else getting a power-off issue with Warcraft in near identical fashion so close to when it was happening for him. His machine also was not bluescreening, it just turns off like you have described - as if someone just pulled the power cord.

We did try other things - such as playing other games, and it never happened when not in Warcraft. Drivers were changed and so forth, but I can't believe a game could cause the machine to physically power itself off without it being a hardware problem, whether that be overheating or a more serious issue. His temperatures were also very stable, as were his PSU rails.

Hopefully the change of power supply will sort the problem for you, as that would be what I originally thought when it was happening to my friend.
 
Very interesting indeed, Flibby, thank you for sharing. My googling attempts have brought up all kinds of similar issues both recently and some going back as far as 2007 which eliminates, in my mind, the chance of it being some kind of horrible patch by-product.

Frustratingly, the one instance I found on the WoW-US Official forums that seemed closest to mine at the outset did not come to a conclusion. I will certainly be trying this PSU swap out once I come back from my weekend away, though it would not be the first Motherboard to throw a wobbly at me... (3 in the last 2 years, in fact)
 
Do you install motherboard drivers from the manufacturer? First few times I installed Vista it just went and installed its own generic motherboard drivers, without highlighting the fact. Caused me no end of grief before I copped it wasn't using the correct ones.
 
Sleepery said:
Do you install motherboard drivers from the manufacturer? First few times I installed Vista it just went and installed its own generic motherboard drivers, without highlighting the fact. Caused me no end of grief before I copped it wasn't using the correct ones.
Click to expand...

I'd have to wait til I'm home on Sunday to check that - I've got to assume the motherboard has whatever OCUK installed, driver wise. I've not performed any updates or asked Windows to since I got it back just after Christmas.
 
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