A couple weeks ago I put together a new PC for myself. Here are the main components:
ANTEC NEOPOWER 480W POWER SUPPLY
Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO2
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
ZALMAN CNPS7700-CU CPU HEATSINK FAN
Kingston ValueRAM PC3200 512MB DDR400 x2
ASUS A8N-E MOTHERBOARD ATX S939 NFORCE4 ULTRA
The computer will spontaniously shut down, i.e., it suddenly loses all power as if I pulled out the plug. I can boot it up again after such a power loss. I've noticed that this problem only occurs when I'm playing 3D games. I can surf the internet, write emails, etc all night long but once I start gaming, the problem starts occuring within 30 minutes or so (although once it happened within 5 minutes of booting the computer and starting a game).
I am reasonably sure the PSU is not overheating. It's not hot to the touch and the exhaust from it's fan is quite cool. I have several case fans that are all working well and the inside temp. of my case is always about 30 degrees C. I've swapped in new RAM and the problem still occurs. ASUS probe doesn't report that my CPU temp is high.
So I'm starting to suspect my video card. Can an overheated video card cause this kind of problem? Can anyone give me a good way to troubleshoot this problem?
Thanks for your time and help.
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If it only happens when you play 3D games, then overheating of the graphics card is a definite possibility. Keep the case open and if it happens again, check the temperature of the card. If it's hot, get a better gpu cooler, like a Zalman ZM80D-HP heatpipe combined with a large slow-spinning fan: http://www.zalman.co.kr/en
I had one that was doing this to me and it turned out to be the MOBO (exact same symptoms). Check your MOBO for any bad capasiters (usualy blue or black cilinders or brown disks).
Look for any that have bulges, cracks, splits, or any sort of discoleration on the MOBO near a capaciter. If this is a new MOBO contact the manufacturer about a replacment.
dont foget the simple stuff.
Stupid things like ide cables, agp/pci-x card not seated etc. (ripped apart my whole computer troubleshooting, found out later that stupid ide cable was causing computer to reboot.)
(put on your ESD strap first! :P)
Always try reseating all pci / agp cards.
Reseat memory.
Try stripping system down to bare neccesties.
Download a benchmark utlitly to stress different components in your system. (i like sandra personally)
Dont rule out memory, alot of times bad RAM will have the same syptoms as overheating.
I built a system for myself and it had a Radeon 9800 pro video card in it. The exact same thing happened to me. My computer would lock up and then suddenly reboot itself. I couldn't figure out what the hell was causing the crashes. I opened my system and started looking at the parts and feeling around. It was EXTREMELY hot were my video card was. I decided to take my video card out to see what the problem was and the fan stopped with me knowing it. I burnt my hand taking my video card out so I stuck it in the refegerator for about 10 minutes for it to cool down. I took off the stock cooler and super glued a 80mm fan on it. That fixed my problem, so you proably have the same issue as me. Take a look at your fan and see what's up. Maybe try to just "tape" another fan on the card and see if that makes a difference. Anyways peace out.
My son's PC started doing this recently. After trying another graphics card (same thing happened), I took out the CPU (slot 1) and all cards and memory. I noticed that the memory and slot 1 card contacts where somewhat dull in appearence (not shiny). I cleaned them all up with electrical cleaner and reseated them all. Not a problem since.
Also, I've had good luck with replacing fans on graphics cards (radeon) that are making too much noise. I just pried off the stock heatsink and fan and replaced it (super glue) with an old 486 heat sink and fan that I had lying around. Nice and quiet and VERY cool to the touch.
Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO2
I smell a little overclocking or badly done softmodding here (I assume that if you have this card, you modded it to an X850XTPE). The cooler is almost surely not a problem, as it uses the X850XTPE reference cooler (which gives plenty of spare cooling power).
If you modded it, mod it again (the 16 pipes mod), remove all overclocking, and if not, download ATITool or Rivatuner and see the number of active pipes. If it says 12, it's OK, if it says 16, you have a (badly) modded VGA.
Suggest you download Motherboard Monitor (Free) run it while you are playing when you set it up check the required box's to LOG the info you can then go back into the log & see what has been happening.
I suspect that the Cpu core is overheating, so before you spend your hard earned money run Motherboard Monitor then post the details before game & during then we maybe able to pinpoint the problem more easily
Here is some information I collected over the weekend:
** Idle (Temperature of components after booting the computer and leaving it idle for 1 hour) **
GPU Fan Speed 54% VPU Temp 38.0 Board Temp 35
CPU 27 c
MB 33 c
+12V 12.096
** Gaming (Temperature after 5 minutes of gaming)
GPU Fan Speed 54% VPU Temp 39.1 Board Temp 38
CPU 33 c
MB 35 c
+12V 12.096
** after 10 minutes the computer crashed before I could take a reading. After rebooting and gaming for another 10 minutes
GPU Fan Speed 54% VPU Temp 39.3 Board Temp 38
CPU Temp 34C
MB Temp 36C
+12V switching beetween 12.032 and 12.096
ebjers: I had a look at the components and I didn't notice any capasiters that looked obviously damaged but I'm going to try and swap in another MoBo if I can find one
Nouareii: I bought the X800 GTO2 card with the full intention of unlocking the extra pipes but so far I haven't done so and not overclocking the PC, I wanted to make sure things were stable before doing that kind of stuff (luckily!).
armand278: I ran 3D mark test a few times, I get a 3DMark of 4475. The PC didn't crash during the benchmarking but a lot of the tests aren't available in the free version of the app...
Oslove: I downloaded motherboard monitor but it doesn't seem to support the ASUS A8N-E board unfortunately (logging would be helpful)
Thanks very much everyone for the responses, I'm stumped on this so it's nice to get some input.
Cheers
Space5000
Your Temps/Voltages are perfect. The problem is surely not cooling-related.
Has the card been used by someone else? Check if the mod is active. Even if it's not complicated (Just a quick Flash and some overclocking), maybe someone could have done it bad and so the card is not working OK.
Some checking:
* Do you have the latest drivers? (www.ati.com)
* Check if Fast Writes is enabled on the motherboard. Then check if it's enabled on the drivers. Try again, and if it still happens, disable it on both.
* Did you plug in the PCI-E Power connector? Check if it's properly installed.
* Check if the card is modded. Taking into account that is an "Overclocker-Friendly" card, someone could have simply installed it, modded it, seen that it didn't overclock so much and returned it. And then you bought it.
Nouareii: while the drivers are the most current and I'm pretty sure the PCI-E Power connector is okay, I'll check out the Fast-writes tonight. A good point -- I haven't checked to see if this has been unlocked, I'll investigate that tonight.
When I was looking at the card temperatures the other day I used an utility called TRIXX and it said the VPU Clock was 398.25 and Mem Clock 492.75. I'll try to find something that can show me if the extra pipelines are unlocked.
Oslove: it's funny you mention taking out one RAM chip. I happened to have tried that and it seemed like I could play much longer before it crashed. But no matter what slot I used, and using either DIMM, my computer eventually powered off. And once it powered off once the crashes became more frequent. Also I borrowed 2 PC2100 DDR DIMMS and using those I was able to game for 4 hours (a record!) but eventually the system powered off. And then power offs became more frequent. Last night I booted using these PC2100 DDRs and the system started powering off almost immediately after starting a game. I don't know if it's a coincidence or if the memory is a factor.
I'm borrowing another motherboard so I'll try to swap that in in the next couple of days to see if my mobo is the culprit.
I would clean the ram chip connect strip I gently Yes gently use a Clean new scotchbrite (Those green cleaning pads my wife uses in the kitchen) Notice my wife uses!!! Then clean off with isopropyl alcolhol the pada are none conductive as well incase a minute piece gets left behind. There are other products on the market these I have found to be good & generally readily available.
It would not harm to clen all other connect strips video card etc.
Over the weekend I swapped my PSU into another computer. Within 30-40 minutes of gaming the computer powered itself off on its own. After that the power supply died. So in this case, the problem was caused by some sort of fault within the Antec Neopower 480 power supply. Since I only bought it a few weeks ago, hopefully I can exchange it for working one.
Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions.
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by: RoadWarriorPosted on 2006-01-06 at 11:19:47ID: 15632294
I would look out any tools that came with your card that let you see core temperature and voltage etc. If these allow logging, then start a log before gaming. If after a few crashes it seems that when it gets to a certain temperature it cuts out the PC then that's what it is. You may need to attempt to reduce your case temperature further or buy an aftermarket GPU cooler if this is the case.