Getting blue screens and reboots

[biofear]

Hi I just starting to have this problem on my pc. When I try to run a few resource heavy games like Far Cry, Battlefield Vietnam or UT 2004, after about 5- 10 minutes it either crashes and reboots or gives me the blue screen. I ran memtest68 on it for 4 hours last night and it picked up 0 errors. I set the voltage to auto in bios and played with the timings a bit and still got the same result. I ran out of ideas on what to do and was wondering if anyone else had some suggestions. Thanks.

 

[amdskip]

What power supply do you have? Memtest is usually pretty accurate.

 

[egale]

Also, you may have a heat problem. Try running with the case open. Are all fans running correctly and are all case openings free of dust?

 

[biofear]

Ok this is my setup. I got a 400W PSU, 2 HDD, radeon 9800 pro, MSI K7N2-Delta Mobo, 2 x 512mb dual channel ram, athlon xp 2500, 120mm fan in the front(intake), 80mm fan in back (exhaust), 80mm fan on top(exhaust), dvd-rw, cd-rw and a clear case. Yes the fans are free of dust and I ran the test with the case open. My temperature of my cpu doesn't get higher than 41 C and my system temperature is about 38 C.

 

[biofear]

Also I'm thinking it may be a a graphics card issue. Because when running windows at idle, working on a document, or just surfing the net, the pc runs great. I tested the cpu as well and that ran fine. It only seems to do it when I stress the graphics card.

 

[amdskip]

What 400w power supply is it?

 

[Mem]

PSU quality is more important then wattage,however you can try your video card in another PC to rule out faulty hardware,also try a different video card in your PC.I presume you`ve installed the nForce chipset drivers,remember you need SP1 installed first if you`re using WinXP.

Other things you can try are relaxed memory timings,try it with fastwrites off in both bios and ATi Control Panle also try running in 4X AGP mode,I also recommend disable system bios cacheable & all video shadowing in bios as well.

Try Driver Cleaner for "ATI" remove current drivers via control panel,boot into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner,install latest drivers back at desktop after,readme file has full instruction details in the download
here .

 

[biofear]

Its a powmax psu. I bought a new areo 7 cpu cooler last week and it draws 7 -13.8 volts. I forgot about it. I bet its a power issue now that I think about it. I got all but one plug on the psu connected to something. Plus the fans that draw off of the PSU too. So when I go into a resource heavy game, I'm thinking that the cpu cooler is taking away from the 9800, causing it to fail due to low voltage. I'm thinking of going with a 550w antec PSU if this is the problem.

 

[mechBgon]

Powmax has a poor reputation. Treat yourself to a nice new Enermax, Antec, Fortron or Sparkle Power 350-450W unit. 🙂 Even if it isn't the root of the problem, you might save yourself from trouble down the road.

edit: yeah, the TruePower550 would definitely tow the boat 😀