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Whah

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PC freezes and/or reboots while playing games.

Hello,

I recently built this system:

3.0 P4 800 FSB socket 478
9600 SE ATI
1.5G 3200 DDR - Corsair
Soyo Dragon MB
325W ATX PSU

When doing normal desktop activity, I experience no problems.

However, when I run any graphical intensive application, I'll encounter this. Usually after 15-20 minutes of play.

What's been done:

- memtest86+ successful on 100 passes.
- Uninstalled SP2, installed SP (didn't work, so I re-installed SP2).
- Switched out the stock heatsink for some highly-reviewed heatsink.
- Tested video card in my other system, running the same applications.
- Tested RAM in my other system, running the same applications.

I'm pretty much stumped at this point in time.

Thanks!
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Zoidling

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Whah

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The 9600SE has no built-in fan.

Something interesting just happened that further leads me to the over-heated graphics card theory:

My monitor shut off. The CPU, as well as the harddrive, was still spinning - all LED's were glowing.

I suppose it's time to upgrade.
maybe a pci slot fan is in order?  I have the same problem with my ti4600 sometimes when trying to play newer games like doom3 or farcry.
Are you overclocking your video card? Like others have said, the problem may lie there. I would bet that the video card has at least a heat sink, and that should do for most needs.

You may also be having bad airflow within your case.
Also, have you installed the latest drivers for your graphics card? That may help solve the problem.
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ASKER

Not overclocking my card.

There is a small heatsink on the video card, yes.

Newest drivers are installed.
Try uninstalling the drivers using a program like DriverCleaner (to get rid of the driver completely) then reinstall. If it still doesn't work, you may want to try a custom Radeon driver such as Omega's drivers (http://www.omegadrivers.net).

I am also thinking that your DirectX installation might be causing the problem, since you mentioned that you installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled SP2. Some games lock up with the wrong DirectX configuration. I would suggest that you create an SP2 slipstreamed Windows XP CD and reformat using that to start fresh.
Try checking your power requirements against this: http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ 
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ASKER

It was the card.

I had two extra 80MM fans, so I rigged a cooling system on the heatsink; one directly on the heatsink, and the other blowing the air out of the case.

Seems to work for the moment.