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PC rebooting during stressful games


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Got my new system you see in my sig built last weekend and was puttering along happily with it, playing WOW, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Empire at War, and Guild Wars. Everything seemed good.

 

This weekend I started installing some more stressful 3D apps: Battlefield 2, FEAR, 3dMark 06. Running any of those, I can only play for a couple of minutes before the system instantly reboots. Not fun. :(

 

My first thought is the PSU isn't strong enough, but shouldn't 470W be plenty for this system? That's 470 sustained according to PC P&C - 520W at peak. My 12V is rated at 26A and sits at around 12.09 - 12.15V according to "PC Health" in the BIOS.

 

To try to rule out the PSU, I set all speeds and voltages to stock, and unplugged the power on my IDE HD, both DVD-ROMs, and two 120mm case fans, leaving me with the most barebones system I could still run the games with. Still reboots in exactly the same way.

 

Help! This machine is mainly for gaming, so this problem is especially frustrating. :( It seems odd that so many games run fine (all the ones in the first paragraph) but these few (admittedly more graphically taxing) games are killing the system.

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How about your temps...?

This can happen when the cpu or the gpu loads high and get hotter..

Also I would recommend you trying another psu from a mate.. 470 wouldnt be plenty if you are coing.. but would be plenty on stock i guess...

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How about your temps...?

This can happen when the cpu or the gpu loads high and get hotter..

Also I would recommend you trying another psu from a mate.. 470 wouldnt be plenty if you are coing.. but would be plenty on stock i guess...

 

Originally had the 3700+ (2.2 GHz stock) OCd to 2.75, and that idled around 38-40C, with 100% load (prime95 for 24 hrs) not breaking 50.

 

However I clocked everything at stock and it's still rebooting exactly as before.

 

I don't get why it would happen with some games but not others...? Could it be the video card? (It's an nVidia reference board I got from work.)

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Is the gpu overclocked..?

Well.. even if its the gpu, I would expect it to freeze or show artifacts or something like that.. not rebooting...well i guess it could...

I'm not sure about your vid card, do you have to give an external power supply to it..?

No possiblility to borrow another psu and check..?

Did you try doing a stress test.. occt would be good...

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Hmmm....

But everything is in stock... and I wouldnt expect Corsair to malfunction on stock values..

But I do have one worry.. Just now I saw your mem specs..it is a 2Gb kit huh..

Well.. sometimes there can be issies with ! gig ram sticks.. I think I saw somehwere..not sure though.. that the 2Gb kits giving problems..

well... i think you could try few things.. run with one stick.. borrow a 512x2 ram and try them.. loosen your timings..

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Okay I'm feeling really stupid right now.

 

Just went into my case to plug the DVD-ROMs and second hard drive back in and noticed the video card power cable was unhooked. I guess I jiggled it loose accidentally when I was messing around with other stuff in there recently. I can't believe it worked at all without that plugged in.

 

Anyway, replaced it and just ran through 3dmark with no problems so I guess I'm good. Sorry for the false alarm. :D

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