Crashing while gaming

Orion

This has been pi$sing me off for a while now. When I game (usually WoW or UT) my pcs crashes. This only happens on a warm day. So it's overheating somewhere. I was convinced it was the GFX card (9800 Pro w/Arctic Cooler) so I bought a Zalman cooler for it - no difference. I also got a front case fan and a PCI slot exhaust fan while I was at it (see diag for fan configurations).

It is still happening. Damn warm here tonight and it crashed a number of times in a short period while playing Wow until I gave up. In between two of the crashes I swapped out the 9800 Pro with a 9200 SE and got about 3 mins of game time before dying again. So it's not the video card.

The crashes take two forms - Total system lockup requiring a power off and restart or the pc just restarting itself. Now I'm thinking it's the chipset, cpu or memory that's overheating.

System is Athlon XP 2600+ running at defaults - no overclocking. The motherboard is a M7NCD. I've 2 DIMMs in it - stock one from Maplin 2 years ago and another one I added in last year. The second one is DDR400 running at 333. I've removed the 400 dimm and got the same crash.

Below are a diag of the fans, a cap of the motherboard monitor that came with it and a pic of the board in the same aspect as the crappy OODraw image

Please help. I'm thinking of heading up to Maplin tomorrow and getting a Northbridge cooler and 2 heatspreaders for the RAM.

Cuddlesworth

First of all heatspreaders for ram do nothing, and northbridge coolers are a waste of money. The stock coolers are sufficant. Narrow down the problem.

Download prime 95. Go into option and choose stress test, then small ftp's. Let it run for 3 or 4 hours. If it errors your cpu is overheating.

Then download memtest, burn it to a cd. Run it, focus on tests 5 + 8. Let each pass at least 10 times. If it errors your memory is faulty.

Download Ati-tool. Let it check for artifacts, if you get them then its your card.

Check your hard-drive using check-disk. Same againn.

L31mr0d

try reseating your mobo, odd I know but when the board heats up it could expand and be accidentily shorting off the case. It happens. Your heat does not seem to be a factor, unless your CPU is hitting the 60+'c mark i wouldn't worry about it. Try underclocking your graphics card and trying it again, if it still crashes underclock your CPU.

Orion

krazy_8s wrote:

First of all heatspreaders for ram do nothing, and northbridge coolers are a waste of money. The stock coolers are sufficant. Narrow down the problem.

Download prime 95. Go into option and choose stress test, then small ftp's. Let it run for 3 or 4 hours. If it errors your cpu is overheating.

Then download memtest, burn it to a cd. Run it, focus on tests 5 + 8. Let each pass at least 10 times. If it errors your memory is faulty.

Download Ati-tool. Let it check for artifacts, if you get them then its your card.

Check your hard-drive using check-disk. Same againn.

Ran Memtest a few weeks ago when this started happening - no errors. Ran ATI-tool too - no problems. Even underclocked the card (core and memory) and got the same. But swapping the card proves it's not that anyway. I'll give Prime95 a try - forgot about that test.

Why do you say that Northbridge coolers and heatspreaders do nothing?

Orion

L31mr0d wrote:

try reseating your mobo, odd I know but when the board heats up it could expand and be accidentily shorting off the case. It happens. Your heat does not seem to be a factor, unless your CPU is hitting the 60+'c mark i wouldn't worry about it. Try underclocking your graphics card and trying it again, if it still crashes underclock your CPU.

That'd be a new one on me. Worth a try . The CPU only hits 43-44 even on a warm night and while gaming. Once it starts it gets worser and worser. For example on this lovely balmy night we're having it crashed after about an hour, logged back in got 10 mins, then 5, then 3, then almost instantly.

[edit]should have mentioned that the bios has a heat warning for the cpu - was set to 50 and I upped it to 60. There's no way that cpu is hitting 60 anyway.

Cuddlesworth

You could be getting bad readings from your temp sensor, only way to check is to stress it and see. You could be getting a short but its a long shot. Then againn there is not much else.

Northbridges dont produce much heat and normally operate at higher temps. So the passive cooler or fan is usally enough. Ram sinks provide no benifit, sometimes you can getter better temps taking them off.

dazftw

Maybe you could try this.. my pc was restarting everytime I played HL2 ! Right click your my computer icon.. if you have one... then properties.... then advanced... then startup and recovery... then uncheck automatic restart... !

Orion

DeafVision wrote:

Maybe you could try this.. my pc was restarting everytime I played HL2 ! Right click your my computer icon.. if you have one... then properties.... then advanced... then startup and recovery... then uncheck automatic restart... !

Been there done that.

And Alt+PrtScn is a wonderful combination or did you just want to show off your ultra-white desktop

Anti

That has happened to me on a few pcs, And every time it was due to lack of air comming in from the front of the pc case.If your case allows put in 1 or 2 case fans. And upgrade your cpu hsf.

8T8

I would try the chipset coolers even the passive ones from Zalman if they are compatible, not all chipsets are the same some run much hotter than others (particularly NVIDIA ones) and manufacturers cut corners to save costs by not including one or using the bare minimum.

They shouldn't cost a lot anyway so it's worth a try at least.

dazftw

Macros42 wrote:

Been there done that.

And Alt+PrtScn is a wonderful combination or did you just want to show off your ultra-white desktop

LOL i was waiting for sum1 to say that...

Gryzor

this was happening to me up until recently......turned out there was a load of dust and crap between the fins on my CPU heatsink...basically making it useless.....it was only when i looked closely i spotted it, cause the fan on top was hiding most of it....took off the fan, hovered out all the crap and she's fine since ....turned out to be the same story on my arctic cooler, bit of a bastard to clean without taking it apart..

SouperComputer

PSU on the way out? It sounds like you now have adequate ventilation in the case.

I wouldnt bother with RAM heatspreaders, complete waste of time in your case. If the RAM is failing under those conditions, it needs to be replaced not cooled.

My money (failing a software issue) is on a dodgy mobo\PSU.

See how you get on with stress prime.

Orion

Didn't get a chance to stress test the cpu today. I'll try tomorrow. I might actually try hoovering out the cpu hs.

There's no cooling on my chipset at all btw - so a passive zalman cooler might be worthwhile.

[edit]That's obviously rubbish - there is one but it looks like a pretty cheap/crappy one.

SouperComputer

There's no cooling on my chipset at all btw - so a passive zalman cooler might be worthwhile.

Emm, yea very good chance thats the problem alright. I haven't seen a NB without a heatsink since the PIII 810 days. Maybe some early (thunderbird) chipsets didnt have any, but id say thats your problem anyway.

[edit] /slaps head, dont mess with me like that, its too feckin late p[ /edit]

masteroftherealm

Macros42 wrote:

There's no cooling on my chipset at all btw - so a passive zalman cooler might be worthwhile.

[edit]That's obviously rubbish - there is one but it looks like a pretty cheap/crappy one.

Heheheheh u had me scred there for a second!!
No NB Cooler on anything better than a P3 id suicide

Orion

OK I'm embarrassed . It's a little early to be sure but I think I've got it sorted. I spent €10 on a Thermaltake cpu cooler today. Took off the old one to replace it and immediately noticed that there was no coolant between the cpu and heatsink. It must have worn off. Applied Arctic ceramic coolant and put back on the stock cooler and so far it's running 12-13 degrees cooler than last night. And it's more or less the same ambient temp in the room.

Occam's razor eh?

challengemaster

DeafVision wrote:

LOL i was waiting for sum1 to say that...

thats cloud from final fantasy VII yeh?


macros you noob, no thermal paste....jeez!good to hear its sorted anyway :P

Orion

Oh god - is there no getting away from you

There was paste on it when I put it on 18 months ago ...

Playing for 2 hours now and temp hasn't gone over 36 and no crashes. Was hitting 45-46 yesterday.

[edit]Good 3.5 hour gaming session and no crashes. I think it's sorted

challengemaster

Macros42 wrote:

Oh god - is there no getting away from you
.

LMFAO

awhir

omg good 1

Khannie

I was going to suggest putting some new arctic on. DAMN YOU! I COULD HAVE BEEN FAMOUS!!

Orion

Well you're getting old and therefore slower. I mean this thread is two days old ffs

SouperComputer

Took off the old one to replace it and immediately noticed that there was no coolant between the cpu and heatsink.

remind me to slap you if I see you at a boards beers

Khannie

I'll point him out to you. Bagsy videoing it! I'll sticky the resulting avi.

Orion

hehe - that's fair enough. 12th August right?

Orion

Update.

Well it was all working fine. Then it started happening again. This time I'd learnt from my earlier mistakes and checked the thermal paste - there was none between the HS and the CPU. I'd put on loads weeks earlier so I can only assume that it burnt away!

So I liberally applied loads of the stuff this time. I mean lots and lots and lots. All fine again - happy days.

Last night - just before going to bed I noticed that the temp had risen to 46 degrees again. Now I'm running Folding@Home and it was hammering the proc but I didn't expect the temp to go that high. Anyway - I throttled Folding to 75% of available cpu and the temp dropped again to a respectable 38.

About an hour ago I tried to connect to my PC with Logmein only to be told that it's been offline for 11 hours. That's 3am ... hmmm ... running out of the house this morning to catch my train I stuck my head into the room and heard the fans going so I was confident that my 'linux isos' were still downloading. But were they? I won't know til I get home but I'm betting that the machine has crashed again.

So now my question is - could the paste I'm using be ****e? It's the Arctic Alumina XL Thermal Compound. Should I try a different one? Any recommendations?

Spunog UIE

I think most people will tell you that you should only use a TINY amount, and then spread that across the surface ( i find a plastic baggy and your finger the best, old atm card can be okay) artic silver is pretty thick and sticky tho so the bag works the best. You should probably clean the heatsink surface and the top of chip with some alKIhol avoiding anything with a perfume or anything else in it. Then re do the paste using a small amount.

You said you did the tests mentioned above but did you do them for the hours suggested

Cuddlesworth

That is odd? I dont think I have ever seen thermal paste just dissapear.


Clean the heatsink and cpu using isopropanol alcohol. Then Apply a small amount spread thinly or a drop about a small grain of rice in the centre.