bondoe Posted January 24, 2008 Share Posted January 24, 2008 I recently built a new system from scratch. After updating all my drivers, updating BIOS settings etc, I've got everything running smoothly except for one thing. When I open any game (when the video card ramps up it's draw) after about 2-5 minutes, the computer will completely shut down. Not a simple re-boot as in an error recovery, but a total shut down. Given that most hardware conflicts or driver issues would result in a reboot, not a full system crash, I'm lead to think it may be the PSU. My interpretation here is that once my video card pulls for more draw, the PSU calls it quits and just shuts off. All of this hardware, to my knowledge and from my research, seems to have a fairly stable compatibility background. Any suggestions? Could it in-fact be the PSU and is it faulty? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EliteKiller Posted January 24, 2008 Share Posted January 24, 2008 1) Do you have the 8-pin 12V power connector plugged in or are you using the 4-pin? Use the 8-pin. 2) Test your system for stability Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bondoe Posted January 24, 2008 Author Share Posted January 24, 2008 I have the 8-pin plugged in. All the peripherals are plugged in as they should be. The only issue I had thought of is that the video card takes two of the PCI-E plugs (I believe I need to plug them BOTH in to get proper functionality). I don't know if that would cause a problem. Also, if it matters, I'm running Vista Ultimate 64-bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted January 24, 2008 Corsair Employees Share Posted January 24, 2008 This PSU would have no problem running 2 of the 8800GTX cards in this system, so it is unlikely that you are drawing too much power from the PSU. What might be happening is that PSU is receiving an out of spec signal from the board or the 8800 which is triggering the overvoltage, or overcurrent protection circuits on the PSU. It could also be driver or software related. Do you only have this issue with one game/application, or does it do the same thing with multiple applications? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bondoe Posted January 24, 2008 Author Share Posted January 24, 2008 I only have one game installed on the system right now. But I've only experienced it during game-play. While watching videos or running any number of other programs, I have no issues. The computer will run all day and night without an issue other than in this instance. I have updated the BIOS for the evga mobo, and updated the latest drivers for both the mobo and the video card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted January 24, 2008 Corsair Employees Share Posted January 24, 2008 Try downloading and running the latest version of 3Dmark and then benchmark and stress test the system. Let us know if you are able to get through a full loop of the test, or if you run into the same problems! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted January 24, 2008 Share Posted January 24, 2008 Also, just for testing purposes, can you try your game and also 3DMark with 2 memory modules instead of 4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bondoe Posted January 24, 2008 Author Share Posted January 24, 2008 I have tried to run it with only 2 sticks a few times (different combinations of the 4). No change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EliteKiller Posted January 24, 2008 Share Posted January 24, 2008 I'd highly recommend running Memtest86+ for a couple of passes. Then boot to Windows and run Prime95 to stress all 4 cpu cores for a couple of hours. Otherwise you could have an unstable system which is causing your games to crash when the pc is under a load. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bondoe Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 OK. So I tried running each of the three tests. Here are the basic results. 3DMark - Reached the beginning of the third test. FPS hit 0 and the computer crashed again (full shut down) Note: The FPS on tests 1 and 2 ranged from 18 to 8 and I'd say they averaged 12 fps. Memtest - Made it to about 8% of the second test series, three times, each time resulting in a crash. P95V25.5 - Crashed about 45 seconds into the testing sequence. I installed Quake Wars or whatever (the game that came with the video card) and played it for about 15 minutes with no problems at all. It still bails during TF2. Almost like the VC itself is being overloaded. I installed the latest VC drivers off the EVGA website. Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EliteKiller Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 OK. So I tried running each of the three tests. Here are the basic results. 3DMark - Reached the beginning of the third test. FPS hit 0 and the computer crashed again (full shut down) Note: The FPS on tests 1 and 2 ranged from 18 to 8 and I'd say they averaged 12 fps. Memtest - Made it to about 8% of the second test series, three times, each time resulting in a crash. P95V25.5 - Crashed about 45 seconds into the testing sequence. I installed Quake Wars or whatever (the game that came with the video card) and played it for about 15 minutes with no problems at all. It still bails during TF2. Almost like the VC itself is being overloaded. I installed the latest VC drivers off the EVGA website. Any ideas? Your pc is extremely unstable. Are you overclocking? If so set back to defaults. Otherwise you should start by adjusting memory timings (latencies) and increase the voltage .1V, then run the Memtest again. If it still fails bump the cpu voltage .05V and see what happens. If Memtest still fails try one memory module at a time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bondoe Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 No, I'm not overclocking. I have installed a BIOS update from the EVGA website, which may have had an effect. If I reset my BIOS settings to default, will that screw up my RAID settings? I'm not to savvy on how to tweak the timings manually, but I'll find a good guide to walk me through it. More results to come. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted January 25, 2008 Corsair Employees Share Posted January 25, 2008 I would make sure that your CPU Fan is installed properly and not over heating should be 40-60 Deg C in normal use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bondoe Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 Well. I removed the Tuniq heat sink to give the processor a look. And it may be too soon to tell (I'm currently running a CPU burn test) but I think I may have alleviated some of the stress off the CPU. I believe I may have put too much thermal past on the CPU, and I rotated the heat-sink 90-degrees, since I figured I may have put it on wrong. So far my computer is running better from the stress tests. But I haven't attempted to put it through a gaming trial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EliteKiller Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 I believe I may have put too much thermal past on the CPU If you applied more thermal grease than what is depicted in the image below then you've still got too much on the core. http://www.elitekiller.com/pics/AS5_application.jpg In addition, if you cannot complete 2 error free passes of Memtest86+ and at least 30 min. of Prime95 to stress all 4 cores then you're still unstable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bondoe Posted January 26, 2008 Author Share Posted January 26, 2008 Confirmed... Way too much thermal paste. Problem solved! Thanks for all the support guys! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EliteKiller Posted January 26, 2008 Share Posted January 26, 2008 Even though you may have had too much thermal goop applied I still don't see it as the problem with stability. While too much goop may slightly raise the cpu temp, unless you went crazy with it and put it on like cake frosting it's not going to cause instability. It's also impossible to put the Tuniq on backwards. Can you pass the tests that I linked you to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bondoe Posted February 13, 2008 Author Share Posted February 13, 2008 I've passed the tests just fine. No issues. I really think I did put way too much thermal paste on. Since removing and reapplying, no issues whatsoever. Also, with relation to installing the Tuniq tower "backwards" I just rotated the unit 90-degrees to get a better fit in the case and made sure I had it seated properly. Two weeks of problem free PC usage. Aside from TF2 crashing occasionally, but it's unrelated to the issue on topic here. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 Excellent news, glad to hear you got it sorted. Good call EliteKiller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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