Hiya.

I got myself a new system recently and I'm having a few teething issues. There seem to be some knowledgeable sorts around here so I thought I'd see if you could help me pin point what is going wrong.

The problem:
During games (has only happened in games so far) the screen will suddenly freeze and pixels will appear all over the graphics the sound loops and I have to restart my computer to get out of it. This happens at quite random intervals, I can get a good 5 or 6 hours of hard play in with no problems and sometimes it happens after an hour or so.

I've updated to all the latest drivers, BIOS and so forth and so far nothing has helped. My spec is:

Intel Q6600
Asus P5n-E SLI motherboard
BFG 9800 GT 512MB
Arctic Cooling 500W PSU
4GB Corsair XMS2
Running Vista Premium 64 bit

I once got a message relating to a second processor not receiving a message in the expected time interval (I forget the exact wording) from a BSOD but that only happened once. I'm wondering if the processor is bad but i'm also hoping that it is not!

Temps seem to be fine so I don't think overheating is a problem (I have 3 case fans so I'd be surprised if it was). I vaguely considered that the PSU might not be good enough but 500W seems like more than enough.

I've not had a problem quite like this before so I'm not sure what the main culprit is here and googling various things hasn't helped me so far.

Anyone got any ideas what might be up here? If you want to know any other details about my setup then please ask. It's getting quite frustrating so any help would be appreciated.

What brand is the PSU? What are the temperatures of the PC?

Quote from Jakg :

What brand is the PSU? What are the temperatures of the PC?

This is the PSU:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124922

It's a Compucase PSU. Not exactly the best brand I guess!

Just finished playing a game for a while (without a crash thankfully) and the CPU was at 36 celsius. Can't seem to find a temperature thingy in the nVidia control panel so I can't comment on graphics card temperatures. Are there any programs on the net for checking GC temps? I'll have a search for something.

EDIT:
http://www.compucase-hec.co.uk ... tic_power_500-600-700.htm

^ Details on the PSU from the manufacturers website itself.

The PSU is rubbish - that's probably the reason why it's not working right.

(Yes, it's 500w, but it'll have bugger all amps and won't be able to ever actually output 500w in a real world scenario).

I would recommend a PSU but it seems currently it's very fun to pretend I don't have a clue about PSU's so I won't.

psu is ok i guess.

how is the power at where you are located? any power spikes/dips?

stress test it. atitool/cpuburn/superpi, whatever floats your boat. remove one stick of ram

i'd say the 9800 is halting the system, but that might just be the ati fanboy in me :P

I had this kind of problem when i first built my current PC. It turned out to be a defective graphics card.

Do you have a spare you can use to test, or possibly borrow one from a friend, and see if swapping them fixes the problem?

It does also sound like it could be a PSU problem. Try removing everything except the bare minimum of components to minimise the power draw and see if that helps, and like the graphics card test, try swapping it with another if you can and see if that fixes it.

If you have to get a new psu i reccomend this http://www.amazon.co.uk/EZCool ... Silent-700W/dp/B0014DHXQ6

Quote from Luke.S :

If you have to get a new psu i reccomend this http://www.amazon.co.uk/EZCool ... Silent-700W/dp/B0014DHXQ6

Why? EZCool is JUST as bad as Arctic Power

A nice Corsair 550w or OCZ 600w PSU would do your PC fine.

Can't think of anyone I could borrow a graphics card from off the top of my head. I might be able to find someone.

I'll try doing a stress test and disconnect all the components I can and see how that goes.

You won't get very far by doing that. The video card uses the most power, far more than anything else in your system, so you can't really disconnect it or else what would that prove? That your system works fine without a video card?

First, check all power cable connections, to your motherboard and your video card especially, and make sure your RAM modules are fully inserted in their slots. If that doesn't help, the next thing I would do is get my hands on another (better) power supply and see if the computer still freezes with it.

Change PSU to OCZ. I am currently using 500W, but u may need 600W.

Get a tool that logs all your voltages, fe. speedfan, and then stresstest some heavy 3d programs and watch how much your 12v line drops. If it's your PSU the 12v line should drop considerably.
Check for GPU artifacts too with whatever tool u prefer and if those two don't net results I would start swapping parts (GPU,RAM,HDD,CPU,motherboard..preferrably in that order) till u can isolate the cause.
Last step ofcourse requires tried and tested parts that work on the same sockets as your current gear.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

far more than anything else in your system,

are you sure? 'cause iirc, the q6600 is not "far less" power hungry than the 9800GT . just being accurate :P

Ok, I don't think my PSU is bad.

The +12v seems fine. The lowest I've seen it go is 11.65v and I had a crash when the 12v was at 11.84v. So it seem sunlikely that it's the PSU.

I haven't taken it apart to poke it and make sure everything is in firmly yet because I pretty much did that check before I turned it on first time. I'll have a check though.

After that I'm not sure what to do. I don't think of anyone who'd have appropriate bits they could just lend me even for a while. I'll have an ask around. After that I'm not sure what to do! I wish I could figure out what to type in to google to find someone else who has had a similar problem...

Ok so I think it probably is my PSU. I checked out the specs and the graphics card says 26A on the 12V but my current PSU appears to be rated for 18A. For some reason I thought I'd checked that out already which was a bit noobish. I guess I'll have to try a better PSU and see if that helps.

Thanks for the helps.

Try and test with a stronger PSU if u can (from a friend/neighbour?)...11.6 is rather low and often an indication that your PSU can't push enough ampère's through the 12v line to your GPU.
That would be my n°1 guess.

Fe. of all the PSU's i had none ever went under 11.8V, current one runs at 12.2
and the one at 11.8 gave stability issues when i upgraded to a more powerhungry GPU (GF6600 > X1800XTX)

Ok, better PSU has not solved the problem. I tried a PSU that gave me pretty much a steady 12.03 volts and provided enough amps for the graphics card (the card requires a minimum of 26 this PSU says 41 is it's max load.

I'm still getting the same problem though. Is it likely to be a graphics card fault? Could using a PSU that doesn't provide enough amps damage the graphics card?

I doubt very much I can find someone to borrow a suitable graphics card from so I can't easily test it that way.

rma the card.

Yea most likely would be the card if a better PSU doesn't help...but there's no guarantee it is.

it just occured to me

we haven't thought if the mobo is playing nice with the card.

from a quick google, seems lots of people have issues with the combination.

hope i am not doing something wrong.

pasted from google search:

go to the BIOS, Advanced, Chipset, SLI Brodcast Aperature, set it to auto

Quote from george_tsiros :

it just occured to me

we haven't thought if the mobo is playing nice with the card.

from a quick google, seems lots of people have issues with the combination.

hope i am not doing something wrong.

pasted from google search:

go to the BIOS, Advanced, Chipset, SLI Brodcast Aperature, set it to auto

I'm not running SLI, in case I gave that impression, so I'm not sure how this could help. I'm willing to give it a try anyway because its less hassle than RMAing the card!

as long as it is free you got to try everything.

if you have an option to try and you see that it is safe to try, there are four possible outcomes

you try it and it works
you try it but it doesn't work
you don't try it, but it would work
you don't try it, but it wouldn't work

as you see, the only way you can reach a solution is if you try every option (that is safe)

addition: also: what i posted was not meant to tell ou to change the aperture size and simply, only, that. you got to google for stuff. i found out that there are people who (from what i understand from here and there) have similar problems with this combination.

Quote from george_tsiros :

as long as it is free you got to try everything.

if you have an option to try and you see that it is safe to try, there are four possible outcomes

you try it and it works
you try it but it doesn't work
you don't try it, but it would work
you don't try it, but it wouldn't work

as you see, the only way you can reach a solution is if you try every option (that is safe)

addition: also: what i posted was not meant to tell ou to change the aperture size and simply, only, that. you got to google for stuff. i found out that there are people who (from what i understand from here and there) have similar problems with this combination.

I've already tried it and it hasn't worked. I've also done a lot of googling on the matter and never turned that up! I have, however, found something else to try.

I had my memory in the yellow sockets because they were labelled 1 and they were yellow and were, therefore, much more inviting. Apparently it's better to have then in the black sockets if you only have 2 modules. Haven't had a crash so far after trying that but I haven't got a lot playing in either. If this doesn't work then I'll be looking to send the card back next week!

well then seems we were all off. stress test your memory. go compile a kernel or something if you feel adventurous...

Right, I have an Asus P5 and a Q6600 as well, and was also suffering from BSODs after booting up after the build.

What you need to do is go into the BIOS, and into the CPU settings. Manually set the clock settings to what they say in the box.

I can't remember by heart but it'll be like multiplier and bus speed. This is because (for me anyway) when I plonked in the CPU it was automatically overclocked (albeit very slightly, only around 200mhz) but obviously when running with standard voltages and what not this can result in BSODs.

If it's not that, then I'm unable to assist.

Once I had changed this, the problem went away. (*)