System crashes when playing 3d games

install latest directx 9.0b too.

and update your BIOS and motherbord drivers too.

I have dx9.0b and latest driver for the mobo.

btw my cpu kernel temprature is 69 c /156 f high, could that take the responsibility for the crashes?

Thank you!

try having a good power supply at least a 400-450 watt .
u might wanna add another fan.
u are having high end card and they take lots of power and need cooling too.

also u can Try disabling "VPU Recover" from the ATI Advanced Display settings, if that is available for u.

Also check this link, it has some suggestion try these out.
http://forums.gameservers.net/showthread/t-5437.html

Thank you shivsa.
I have a antec smartpower 400w
3 case fans

and i have just tried disabling vpu recover + disabling fast write+ disabling onboard sound + 4x agp as suggested on the page you gave above, but the crash still happens 5-10 minutes after entering a 3d game...

The one thing that seems to be missing are your system specs.  Maybe your system is underpowered for this application.
When did this start happening?  Did you make any system or software changes that could have caused it?
Have you checked Windows Update and applied all updates from there?
If all of this has been done it sounds like it could be heat related.  Open the case and run it with a small room fan blowing inside the case.  Does it run now?

Hi, do a google search for Call of Duty ATI Hotfix.

I was having the same problem *until* ATI released a *temporary* driver update. The problem is solved and now I enjoy countless hours of CoD fun.

Hope this helps.

>btw my cpu kernel temprature is 69 c /156 f high,
holy mother that is warm.

>If yes, does a vga cooling kit help preventing this?
we don't know if that is the problem yet, but a whole kit with fan and memory heatsinks would be a very good idea.  The kits are not that expensive.

are you overclocking?

I would think that this is a heating issue with one of these items.
video card
memory
motherboard
CPU

I think that you need to make sure that you clean all the dust out of your system.

There could also be a problem with you RAM.  It would not suprise me if it is bad.  If you have two sticks take one out and see if it crashes and then vise versa.

Here's a link for the CoD hotfix : http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4291.html

A suggestion. You say the game hangs up or stops sending signals to the monitor.

Now updating your vdeo card and Direct X drivers is one thing. You should also check the game sites for patches.

There is another possibility. The game maybe using a resolution bit depth combo not supported by either your video card or your monitor.

I can't say how you'd go about changing or fiddling with the resolutions in these games since I've never played them. But most games I've played have some form of safemode or something that allows you to change the resolution settings.

Raxen Z

Thank all of you for the replies!

This is a new system, i bought all the parts i need and then assembled them together.
mobo:   aopen ax4c max
cpu:      p4 3.0 800fbs
video:   ati 9800 pro 128mb
ram:     ocz 512x2 pc3200  cl2
sound:  onboard 5.1 (driver not installed)
            sb live! value

btw call of duty is just one of the game that crashes, actually every 3d game can last only 5-10 minutes before crashing on this machine...i'll try the cod hotfix though.

i don't have a room fan :(

Just opening the case should suffice in getting enough air in there.  It is cheaper to buy a small fan at Wal-Mart than to fry puter components.  You may want to try that before putting much expense into it.
Also check how your cables are routed.  They may be restricting the flow of air across the major components.

I would recommend you spend the small amount of money for an 80mm case fan and mount it so it blows across your video card.  I have a 9500 with a Zalman passive heat sink and it gets very warm after 3d games.  I am surprised at your cpu temperature, because I have a 1.8a P4 overclocked to 2.4 and it is just warm to the touch.  Maybe it is getting too hot there and you should look at cooling your cpu, as well.  Either one overheating could account for your crashes.

>i don't have a room fan :(
sure you do.  How you might ask.  Make a hole.  It is not all that diffucult.  I would make a whole that would fit the roundness of a 80 x 80 mm fan, than drill four wholes for your fan and mount it will a fan guard.  You can make it in the side so that air can blow across your video card.  There is two methods for doing this.  One is to use a hand jig saw or a table one if you got one with a metal blade.  You can also use a drill.  You can purchase large hole drill bits at your local hardware store for some where in the range of $10.

You also need to make sure that you have round IDE cables not ribbons.

Have you disabled your onboard sound card in the BIOS.
Having this and your SB Live card can cause conflicts only noticeable while playing games.
Check your onboard card is disabled.

Cheers
Rodger

I haven't even tried to close the case, it's a new antec performance 2 soho file sever tower, so it should be big enough, and i really don't want to drill a hole on it....
I have already disabled the onboard sound.
I'll buy a "room fan" and have a try...
Thank you!

With that case you can get a new side for it with a hole for a fan.
do you have round cables?  

Does anyone know what the shut of temp for P4's are?  I think it is 75-80C.  Not sure

You are running a P4 that is running a temp of 69C.  That is hot for an Athon, but BLAZING for a P4.  If that is the temp that it is running it is very possible that you are reaching the auto tempeture shut of on you MB.  What could cause this problem.

You do not have your heatsink and fan seated correctly.
A voltage problem.  It is either set wrong in bios or getting too much from MB
your case temp is also high therefore not letting your CPU cool
CPU is not getting any air
CPU fan is not running correctly ie not fast enough.  
no thermal compound between heatsink and fan

I would try reseting your heatsink and fan.

FWI:  you can never have enough fans in your case.

I would be inclined to take this PC back to the shop you bought it from.
As suggested above, it certainly sounds like an overheating problem but this is something you should not have to bother with since its new (hopefully still within the 1yr warranty)....

Take it back to the shop osirishotep

Cheers
Rodger

Thermal compound? There is something stick on the bottom of the intel original fansink, and it has melted due to the high temp of the cpu. Is this the "original compound" from intel? (i really don't know about  that :(   ) or i should buy the compound from stores?

I bought all the parts online (im in canada) so i'll have to request rma before returning them, which is very inconvenient....

Thank you!

even if u buy new one there is not  surety that the new one will not melt too.
if possible try to send it back get RMA and return these.

It will melt some, but it should not melt a lot.  The compound in the stores sometimes is not any better than what Intel has put on it.   You will want something like Artic Silver3 or Artic Silver 5.
when you remove the heatsink from the CPU you should add new thermal paste to the CPU when you put the heatsink back on.  So I am guessing that you took it off.  You should get some thermal paste before you move on.  If you got any silicon paste from when you purchased your MB you can use that while we are in the trouble shooting process.  However, in the long run silicon is not very good.
However, with that said before you get RMA request we need to figure out what is bad.  I am assuming that since the compound is melted that it was on the CPU correctly.  This gives me the feeling that, even if your case was not cooled well your CPU should not get that hot.  Here are a possible problems
heatsink fan speed
CPU is bad
MB is bad

what was the speed of your fan in the bios?  

Here are some basic links about thermal compound

this one is how to apply Artic Silver, but it is a basic way to apply most
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm

http://www.heatsink-guide.com/compound.htm

http://www.gamespy.com/hardware/june03/ugm/part2/index2.shtml

http://www.subzeropc.com/article/thermalinterface.htm

http://www.axiontech.com/store/support/cpu_related/AMDstuff.htm

that will give you something to read.

Also, be sure that when you built the computer that you did not install the fans backwards.  This means the air would be blowing the opposite way intended (out for the intake fans and in for the outtake fans).  The fans should have arrows on the side indicating the direction of the airflow.

Auriclus

air flow should flow in in the front and out the back at the top if you did not know.

I have taken out the fansink, the compound is like some half-dry mud, i can not even get it off the cpu and fansink using my thumb nail, is that normal?

The cpu fan speed is 2400 rpm.

i have 2 fans take air in from the front and 1 takes air out in the back.( One of the fans in the front is blowing on three hardrives so it's possibly blowing warm air into the case....)
and the cpufan is blowing down onto the heatsink.

>The cpu fan speed is 2400 rpm.

if you are using the one from intel the fan is not running as fast as it should.  Intel's fans run in the range of 4000 rpm.   This could very possiblely your problem.

>I have taken out the fansink, the compound is like some half-dry mud, i can not even get it off the cpu and fansink using my thumb nail, is that normal?

probabley not, but it was probable caused by the high tempeture.  Most of the time a thermal pad will come of very easily.  There will be some sticking, but you should be able to you a fingernail to rub it off.

>One of the fans in the front is blowing on three hardrives so it's possibly blowing warm air into the case....)
no, you should have a fan cooling the HD.  
FYI:  I like to split hard drives with a space.   Meaning that I would put a HD in top of the drive bay and one in the bottom and leave a space in the center.  you could then take and put the third drive, less used drive, by the floppy.  That is just the way I like to do it.

back to the fan RPM.  

I would take the  fan to a friends computer and hook it up to the MB as a case fan, one of the slots that you can get a reading for RPM.  If the rpm is still 2400 they I would say that the fan is not working correctly.

Thank you, i'll try that.
BTW i turned on the computer this morning and immediately checked the temp, the kernel temp was already 70c and the cpu temp was 34c, shouldn't it warm up gradually?

The cpu fan speed is 2780rpm actually, northbridge fan is 6200rpm.

Ok,, I missed read your post when you posted Kernal tempeture.  The Kernal tempeture is not he CPU temp.  As you just stated above that your CPU temp was 34 C.  34 C is a fine tempeture.   I thought that you said your CPU temp was 69 C in a post above.   I am not sure what the kernal temp that you are posting is.  New intel processors have tempeture sensors on there die, however to your MB has to support these temps and you have to calibrate it.  I would assume that this is the kernal tempeture that you are stating.  This may need some more in put from other people, but i think i lead you down the wrong path.  

what is the ambient tempeture?

however, your fan RPM should be turning a little faster.  At least the P4 that I had the fan ran around 4000 RPM.  

So what i would do is get some thermal paste and put the heatsink and fan back on.  I think that you might want to check the RAM.  If you have two modules take one out and see if you have the same problem and then vise versa.

Thank you buckeyes33.
I have just had a dangerous try. I started the computer without a cpufansink.
The system shut down automatically after the booting check(a beep), and it seemed just like sometimes it shut down when playing 3d games.
The ambient temp is little low than the cpu temp, like 32c.

I have bronze heatsink on my ram, and it was not warm when the computer is on.
I have connected the cpufan to another computer and its speed was 2900rps.
So i think what i should do is changing to a better cpu fansink?

I touched the cpu's back after the system shut down, it was really hot. If this was the "cpu temp", i can not believe it's 34c. It must be like 70c, so it's the kernel temp?

>It must be like 70c, so it's the kernel temp?
As I said before it might be the tempeture of the core.  I am not sure.  But I do know that if it is the core temp then it has to be calibrated.

since you have the heatsink fan off, take the CPU out of its socket and look at the pins carefully and see if you see a pin that is burnt or blackened.  

Do you have a friend that would be willing to have your CPU in his computer?  I would put the CPU w/heatsink and fan and try it on another MB.  If you have the same problem, then I would guess that your CPU is not any good.

If it still works stick it  back in and put the heatsink and fan back on.  You should have recieved some silicon thermal compound with your MB to do this without haveing to buy anything.
After that try the RAM test as I stated above.  

When you get some thermal compound let us know what you find out.

I have applied the arctic silver ceramique thermal compound to the cpu, to my surprise, the cpu has reached the 50c temp altert from my mobo. and the cpu temp is 46c just after the computer was turned on like 3 minutes without runing anything.
I'm pretty sure that i have applied enough thermal paste and i put the heatsink back to where it was, but why did this happen?

well, it get back to 34c after 10 minutes idle.

PLease don't tell me that you are using ceramique?

>why did this happen
it is the way they design the compound.

I don't understand, what is ceramique?

GLUE

Arctic Silver Ceramique is made with micronized aluminum oxide, boron nitride and zinc oxide.

Ceramique uses a high-density layered composite of five unique shapes of thermally conductive aluminum oxide, boron nitride and zinc oxide sub-micron particles to maximize particle-to-particle contact area and thermal transfer.

This exclusive combination provides performance exceeding most metal based compounds.

Controlled triple phase viscosity. Ceramique does not contain any silicone.

________________________

Do you mean it's bad? But it's the only thermal compound sold in the local store.

well it will work fine since you have a P4 it will not be as bad.  If you had an AMD, it would not be good to use it.

The problem with cremique is that it is harder to get off.  Intel has a large plate like thing on the back of there CPU's instead of you just putting thermal compound on the die you are actually putting it on a piece of metal.

any way why don't you run some games and see if it crashes.  My guess is it will considering we have not done much to correct the problem yet.


FYI:  you might notice a little higher tempetures than before.  If you put the compound on correctly the tempeture will drop of the next week or so.

i am sorry i looked at the artic silver website.  Cremique is not glue.  I don't know what I was thinking.

The cpu temp alert sounded before it crashes....so i turned it off immediately. It meant that the cpu temp has reached its peak since i bought it cuz it's the first time i heard the alert.

the tempeture thing is still correct though.

So you mean the 50c is normal cuz the paste was newly put on? Compare to the intel original paste, is the ceramique better or not?

Thank you, buckeyes33!

you didn't apply to much artic silver did you?  When they say thin layer they mean thin.  If you get it to thick it will act as an insulater.  I use an older credit card to apply it.  I start in one corner and put a little drop on the CPU.  I then just work it around untill it is covering the whole CPU and never add any more.

quote from the Artic Silver site

During the system's initial use, the heat from the CPU lowers the viscosity of the compound to enhance the filling of the microscopic valleys and ensure a minimum bond line between the heatsink and the CPU core. Then the compound thickens slightly over the next 100 to 300 hours of use to its final consistency designed for long-term stability.

end quote

if you put it on correctly 50 C is high, even for newly put on paste.

Yes artice silver is better than what intel has, as long as used correctly.  I however have never used the cremique version.

Seems that i put to much... i'll get some of it off there.

that is what I thought.

I just want to do a check of what you have tried and not.  

i see that you have messed with the video drivers.  Tried a house fan.

have you tried removing one RAM stick, seeing if it works.  Then doing it to the other.

In your bios set the system to to "load optimal settings"  see what happens with that.

I have tried 3 video drivers
i have no house fan, but i tried to use a hairdryer blowing strong cool air into the case.
i have tried using both ram stick one at a time.

i'll see if i have a load optimal settings in my bios.

I cleaned the cpu and the heatsink then re-applied a thin layer of paste in it.

>i'll see if i have a load optimal settings in my bios.
you do

I haven't restarted yet,
My call of duty has a bug which is i have to terminate the process in the taskManager after quit the game to close it completely.
Just now I quit the game, but let the process continue, it occupyed 50% of the cpu processing ability, then i saw the cpu temp climbed from 39 c to 50c in about 2 minutes...

do you have a friend that you could put your CPU in his/her computer and see if it crashes.    If you got your CPU installed correctly I could see there being a problem with either the MB or CPU.

What kind of MB do you have?

My mobo is aopen ax4c max.

I can't get another computer that fits this cpu....:(


My bios doesn't have a load optimal settings option, instead there is a load default or turbo default... i have loaded them, the temp is still hot.

The temp now is even higher than it was before i changing the paste. So i think there should be a prob with the paste or the heat sink. I hope there is nothing wrong with the cpu and mobo....but the posibility is there though..

I did't put on the hook for the heat sink, so there is less pressure to press the sink closer to the cpu? Is that a problem?

I did hook it on before changing the paste, and the cpu temp did go that high....

to the above comment.

There would be less contact between your heatsink and CPU so make sure you got it attached correctly.
You did not load turbo defaults did you?   You just need to load the regular defaults.

Now i have loaded the defaut setup, and put the hook on, problem still there.
Do you suggest me to buy a better heatsink fan? Or I can be sure the cpu is defective?

After loading the OS, the cpu temp is 32c, which is the lowest i have seen...but not so good when playing 3d games.

I hope after doing that, that you still have a computer to use.

I have checked all the capacitaters and not even one of them looks unusual.

I have another computer( only 400mhz fbs cpus fit it).

I just meant to have another computer that you would be able to get on the internet.

If it was me I would send the board and the CPU just to be safe.  Then I would only have to do it once.  If they don't allow you to.  Then send the CPU back.  

Well, i will request an rma...

One more question, why the cpu jump to 50c? It had never been like this before.

>why the cpu jump to 50c?
you might still have to much thermal compound on the cpu.  thin means thinner than a paper.

It is thiner than a paper, it's almost half transparent...

that is good.  

I have know clue what would cause that tempeture jump.  It could be that your MB is supplying too much power to your CPU.  There are a lot of things that could go wrong.   In my eyes I would not be suprised one bit if it was the MB.  

Do you have a multimeter?  If you do.  Then test the power supply lines and see what the voltages are.

do you mean the voltage in the cpu? The default setting sets it to 1.525v, however on the temp monitor there is a value names "VCore", it varies from 1.47v to 1.50v.

The funny thing is that after changing the paste, the cpu temp is lower than before when having low utilization, but have higher temp when utilization is high.

I just meant voltages in general.

>VCore", it varies from 1.47v to 1.50v.
that is kind of low, but how are you monitering it.  If you are us MB5 then it is not always accurate with voltages.

Yes, from the bios, and the MB has is with a software that allows you see the bios when you are in windows.

Low voltage but still high temp...

>Low voltage but still high temp...
strange.....

that makes me think more that it could be a MB problem.

That'll be a lot of work....
Anyway, thank you buckeyes33!

yes it will be.  If you want to just send the CPU back and see what they say.  

As for the question you probably should close it out now.  However, I want to know what happens in the future so keep me posted.  This has really boggled my mind.

>keep me posted
I'm not sure how? Do i accept one of the anwsers or not?

you can accept one of the answers.  Probably one of them towards the bottom.  It is hard to do it since we are not really sure which one is bad.

when I mean keep me posted.  I mean after you get you parts back.

ok, i really appreciate your time and help!

no problem.  
I hope you have learned a lot.  Hopefully when you get all your parts back that you still don't have this problem.  That would be bad.

Hopefully not...