computer freezes randomly - heat probs?

[oupei]

well, since i moved my GF3 Ti200 from my PII system to the Athlon system, my Athlon's been acting up. Occasionally (maybe 20min maybe 5hr) it'll freeze and the screen will stop responding, and the only way to fix is a hard reboot via the little button on the bottom of the case. anyhow, here's the setup:
ECS L7VZA
AMD Athlon 1.2 ghz T-bird
256MB PC133 ram (at least i think 133, too lazy to check)
GF3 Ti200
unknown case, assume the worst (it has one big fan at the back besides PSU fan)
300W PSU, unknown brand, again assume worst.

anyways, the visiontek people said it's probably heat. I could've maybe gotten it replaced under warrantee but it was already an RMA, so I dunno if that would've helped. well, I'm running open case and I attached a chipset heatsink and fan to the back side of the GF3 and i'm running open case but still no go. Speedfan registers temp1 = 60C, temp2 = 44C, temp3 = 23C at full load. memtest checks okay for a few hours, didn't bother to check longer. I've run 3dmark 2001 for like 5hrs before without problem, but couple times it'll exit out and say that it can't initiate Direct3d and i can't open anything else because there's "not enough system resources" or something like that. i've run prime95 for like 90min now but will leave on overnite. btw, GF3Ti200 ran fine on my PII. Via 4in1 drivers and det drivers are fairly recent, shouldn't be the drivers.

Questions:
do i know that this is a hardware problem? both systems run win98SE btw.
how can i maximize cooling (temporarily to check if that indeed is the problem)?
is it the GF3 overheating or the CPU or the memory or the mobo chipset or the <insert component here>?
I thought overheating GPU's from overclock results in artefacts and like snow on the screen and stuff, not system crash...
i dunno what else, any advice anybody?

 

[oupei]

*bump*

well, with normal desk fan blowing at the open case, temp1 reads 58, temp2 reads 35 and temp3 reads 23. so, i assume that temp1 is cpu and temp2 is system temp and temp3 is malfunctioning as even ambient temp is higher than that. I guess that also means that the cpu temp can only be lowered with a better cpu heatsink. well, advice anybody? btw, prime95 checks out fine, but it still crashes.

 

[beatle]

You say that Prime95 "checks out find, but it still crashes." Does this mean when you are running prime95, it is stable, but when you do other things it crashes? What kinds of things are you doing when it crashes? Have you run memtest overnight yet? I'd also try another video card in there and see if you can crash the system.

 

[oupei]

well, prime95 crashed last night, but it's been running for almost six hours now today. no miscalculations or failed tests or anything.

 

[oupei]

okay, swapped vid cards and crashed in prime95 again so now I'm totally confused. if it's not the vid card, what could it be?? i'm trying memtest86 overnight tonight. if it crashes in that does that mean it's narrowed down to processor and ram?

 

[TronX]

You should get that Temp down to around 50C.
So a better CPU cooler is needed, but by doing
this you may need a better PSU to support it.

Try this first.. do a scandisk for bad sectors.
Then buy a better CPU fan/sink and then
if that is not enough start to replace things
like the PSU, Ram and Motherboard.

 

[oupei]

arrgghh, i just swapped vid cards back and it still crashed so it's definitely not the vid card. It did fine in memtest for 7.5 hrs and i figured that was enough, so i switched to prime95 and it crashed again. so does that mean that it's not the memory, cpu, or mobo? if so I guess it might be the PSU. what are the symptoms of a failing/insufficient PSU?

 

[0roo0roo]

if blowing a huge fan into an open case doesnt help stability, its not heat. now you get to have fun narrowing down the possibilities by swapping out components one by one. not fun.

 

[0roo0roo]

theres also format c install windows again

 

[mechBgon]

A full format & reinstallation should shake out any viruses and spyware too.

All the same, your PSU may be getting weak as well. If you want a quality unit on a budget, you might consider this 360W Enlight, $39 shipped and I see it has a ball-bearing fan.

If you do get into your case, take a close look at the capacitors to see if any of them seem to be bulging or leaking, too. And it's possible that your motherboard itself is simply getting flaky. But a decent power supply is a safe investment since it will be useful no matter what the outcome is, so I'd recommend starting with that.