Computer crashing on any semi-intensive fullscreen game

[Timo]

Hey guys, my brother's computer is in the shitter yet again. Everytime I play a fullscreen game that stresses his PC a little, it crashes. Monitor goes blank (no signal), sound cuts out. There's no BSOd either. After I hard shut it down, the only thing Windows picks up through the ordeal is that it suffered an unexpected power loss (due to me holding the power button down).

STALKER crashes within about 10 seconds, L4D, L4D2, TF2, Shattered Horizon, Crysis, MW2 all crash between a few minutes or at least within an hour. Torchlight doesn't crash though (thank god !), or that indie game Osmos or whatever it's called.

He's got the latest chipset drivers (apparently a problem), latest drivers for his 4850, and his system is pretty much identical (ram, cpu, gpu) to mine except for his motherboard. Does anybody know what kind of tests I can run? I don't have any spare parts lying I can swap out either. I doubt there's anything wrong with his ram - I use lightroom frequently which is pretty ram intensive but there's no problems.




Help. Please. I don't have access to my computer until I go back down to uni next month :mech:

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Check the temps?

[Timo]

I will, but his computer's case is a massive coolermaster thing with two 20cm fans, so I can't see it being temps.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

I've had this problem before, and it was the temps, so idk.

[Cojafoji]

I will, but his computer's case is a massive coolermaster thing with two 20cm fans, so I can't see it being temps.
on my last computer, i had 2 120mm fans, 4 80mm fans, and an aftermarket cooler, and the temps were still shitty because it needed new thermal grease.

[Phopojijo]

He could have a bad mobo that only gets stressed in high-end games... or his videocard is somewhat deadish or is overclocked (maybe even from factory).

[Jelly]

Yeah, dust and poor conductivity can still cause overheats with massive fans.

SIW (http://www.gtopala.com/siw-download.html) can show you the temperatures of various components, so run it beside some windowed game and see what kind of temperatures you hit.

[Syuusuke]

dust in the components! check them out

also if they're OC'd?

happened to me and im kinda stuck playing on lower settings than usual

[Timo]

I think you guys might be right - it crashed just as the 4850 reached 80 or 90C, one of the two. I'm pretty sure mine never got that hot, and my case has much, much worse ventilation (everything else runs 10-20C hotter than his at idle). It's not dusty either. I'll see if it crashes again at the same temp.

[StankBacon]

is the hs/fan on the card working? if so it might need to be reseated with some new thermal paste.... or its just a bad card i dunno.

[Timo]

The fan's running fine. Is a GPU fan just as easy to reseat as a CPU fan?


e: Yeah just crashed again when it hit 92C. My brother needs to flip his CPU fan around so it's not counteracting the fan on the top of the case, so he'll be buying some thermal paste anyway.

[Cojafoji]

The fan's running fine. Is a GPU fan just as easy to reseat as a CPU fan?


e: Yeah just crashed again when it hit 92C. My brother needs to flip his CPU fan around so it's not counteracting the fan on the top of the case, so he'll be buying some thermal paste anyway.
B B B B BINGO

[Timo]

I honestly never suspected it to be heat related. My computers case earlier this year had absolutely no ventilation (no fans other than on the GPU and CPU, two 6cm holes in the side and a 12cm hole in the back), and the GPU rarely ran at above 70C. I'll email his supplier tomorrow to see if i'll void the cards warranty to fix the overheating problem. Turns out his motherboard has integrated graphics - i'd rather send the card away for a few days and get a brand new one than accidentally fuck up his existing card even more.

[Timo]

Thanks for all the help guys, my brother's card is off to the supplier tomorrow. +rep if I can.

[Phopojijo]

You could have just downclocked it...