Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: AlphaOne on January 24, 2009, 10:39:23 am

Title: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: AlphaOne on January 24, 2009, 10:39:23 am
First time i neticed this was when attempting to play a FS mod ! Did a bit of meddling around and since i could surf the web and listen to music and such didn't give it much attention especially since just a few hours before i had played another FS 2 mod with no problems.

Then i decided to try something else .

So i decided to try an play Undercover on it . Well the game loaded did 2 missions or so then hit alt tab then posted on the forums then decided to get back in game so i hit alt tab again and guess what the comp crashes. Meaning it resets after giving me some sort of blue screen error.

Got it at work today and decided to check the cooling paste well no surprise it was almost rock solid so decided to change the paste on both the processor and the cooler for the vid card.


Now I'm attempting to run it again .

Also must mention that the CPU temp. before this was raising towards 64 degrees Celsius and rising with the fan speed constant at about 1700 rpm. which is strange since it usually goes up to 3500 rpm !  this was in BIOS !

So my question does anyone have a better clue as to what might be wrong with it assuming the paste was not to blame ?

Edit:

Wasnt the paste ! Now im swapping the powersource out with a new one !

This happened all of a sudden .

Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: Ghostavo on January 24, 2009, 11:05:48 am
Try using this (http://sp2004.fre3.com/download.htm) to stress your CPU and see where the temperature stabilises when on full load for an hour or so. If the computer crashes while it's in progress, I'd wager it's heat related. If not, I'd point at the game.
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: AlphaOne on January 24, 2009, 11:25:11 am
Well just dia a lil test and then checked to see how hot the vid card was and i can tell you i burned myself on the cooler. Its a fanless vid card. So im guessing its the vid card which is strange since i cand use windows normally meaning music movies web and such...! Now im swapping out the vid card!
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: Ghostavo on January 24, 2009, 12:09:38 pm
Well just dia a lil test and then checked to see how hot the vid card was and i can tell you i burned myself on the cooler. Its a fanless vid card. So im guessing its the vid card which is strange since i cand use windows normally meaning music movies web and such...! Now im swapping out the vid card!

There are things such as passive cooling. Mostly on lower end cards though.
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: AlphaOne on January 24, 2009, 12:34:14 pm
thats what i said ! and its not really low end but not med end its a 512 Mb vid card 8500 GT !

It seems that the problem was indeed caused by the vi card. Dont know what might have happened since as i told you im able to run windows pretty normal just not gaming.

Even if its a passive cooling its shouldnt be that hot i mean you raelly cant keep your hand on it after you turn off the PC. Well if you have really thick skin you can but you get my point. Now il just have to wait and see. No more gaming for me ! Il use the onboard vid card its a 8mb intel vid card. just enough to get me past windows and be able to surf and such.

but i still dont get whay it seems to run the game at one point in this case Undercover then when i change the resolution in game it crashes.

Shouldnt it be crashing at one  when i try to load the game ?? Well sometimes it does this but sometimes it doesnt .
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: Jeff Vader on January 24, 2009, 12:39:28 pm
How's your computer case? Air flowing through alright? Even the best passive coolers fail if there's only hot air around them.
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: AlphaOne on January 24, 2009, 01:01:51 pm
well never had any problems with it so far and i always keep one side of the casing off. Its a habbit i go from my previous PC which was an AMD rig.


Il have to wait till tomorrow or monday to swap in a new vid card and see if that was really the main problem. But im about 95% sure thats where the problem was.
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on January 24, 2009, 02:01:53 pm
Had the same issue but mine turned out to be the power supply.  The video card drew more power for the games and over time the power supply which was almost at full load anyway became a little weak.  Vid card would reset itself to prevent damage.  Later as the power supply got even weaker the vid card would just shut the system down until it cooled off.   

So if the new vid card doesn't help try the power supply.  Could be it just doesn't have enough left in it to rev up the fans when the video card is generating that extra heat. 
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: BloodEagle on January 24, 2009, 02:28:52 pm
Also must mention that the CPU temp. before this was raising towards 64 degrees Celsius and rising with the fan speed constant at about 1700 rpm. which is strange since it usually goes up to 3500 rpm !  this was in BIOS !

Be sure to turn off that retarded silly SmartCooling feature.

By the way, 64°C is very, very hot for a processor that isn't doing something CPU intensive (see: en/trans/decoding).
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: AlphaOne on January 24, 2009, 02:54:38 pm
Damn i don't know whats going on with my rig. One point the Fan leaves the CPU (dual Core) to go up to 64 degree. then it keeps it at about 40-45 degrees.

As for the vid card well as i stated before the little cooling thing (no active cooler on it ) tends to heat up  really really far i mean i could cook eggs on it i think .

But then it should shut down immediately but then it should shut down right away to prevent damage !

The power supply is not an issue since i swapped my 500 W power with another one 500w real power.  mine is at about 460-480 w real power max.


Someone suggested in might be a BIOS problem with the BIOS overclocking the vid card if i push it automatically ! Haven't heard such a thing before.

Also it was suggested i try a reinstall of the windows and such since it might also have nothing to do with the physical components but with windows. He said that heating in excess in a fanless vid card is not out of the normal.

Hopefully ill try a new vidcard for testing in 2 days max. and if the rig works fine then it has to be the vid card.

I was told that a vid card might be broken and still seem to work fine even play some games for a limited amount of time . but the card would be broken nevertheless .

Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: castor on January 24, 2009, 07:09:25 pm
Got one of those passively cooled vid cards here (9600gt). The heat sink gets damn hot, about 70 degrees celcius, and thats while idling :eek2: Horrible!
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: IceFire on January 26, 2009, 11:07:11 pm
Video cards and CPU's get hot...very hot.  You shouldn't be able to touch either of their heatsinks.  Thats the point of a heatsink...to spread out the heat across a wider area and then dissipate it across as much surface as possible.  So a passive heatsink being hot is not unusual.  Its doing its job.

This doesn't sound like a Windows problem.  You say you've swapped PSU's already so it could be the car or the CPU causing it.  A blue screen followed by hard reset tends to be hardware related in someway.  Power is always an issue but a defect somewhere is likely the cause.

Run memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) and make sure its not the RAM.

Games will stress the hardware much more than windows and a bit of music is going to. So this is not unusual.
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: AlphaOne on January 28, 2009, 01:53:08 am
Well ive reinstalled windows and all the drivers ! For the moment i have no complaint. It appears and i underline appears to have been some sort of windows fail safe that some dude told me activates if there is something wrong with the drivers. Since as he explained it there is some sort of monitoring over the GPU gooing on and windows interprets the excess heat as some sort of problem and resets the computer.

Anyway if by some reason i should have the same problems im gooing to just swap the vid card out and get a new one !

Il invest another 100 euros and get a more powerfull one.
Title: Re: So my computer tends to crash each time i try to play a game!
Post by: S-99 on January 28, 2009, 05:05:04 am
I'm sure it wouldn't be much trouble to slap a fan on the card and hook it up to motherboard power. I had to do this for many of my dad's old job computers that had passively cooled geforce 4's. They were so unstable until i put some fans on them.