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HELP! PC resets under stress tests and games

K

KingRoLo

Junior Member
Specs

Vista Home 64
Intel Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz
ASUS P5K
Club3D 8800GTS 512
4Gb Crucial Ballistix 8500
2 x WD5000AAKS
Audigy 2 ZS
2x NEC Optiarc DVD RW
Thermaltake Purepower 430W

I recently moved from the UK to Brazil and took most of my PC components with me. When i arrived i bought a new Thermaltake Purepower 430w PSU for the change from UK 240v to south america 110v.

I have rebuilt my PC and it loads into vista 64 but when i play a game it immediately resets the PC. So i downloaded Prime95 to stress all four cores and it also resets the PC either immediately or after 1 minute.

So i went back to basics and removed 3 sticks of ram, network card, DVD RW, HD and reduced RAM timming, added voltage to the CPU and DIMM. Then i used memtest86+ and it tests fine overnight with zero errors and no restarts.

I thought i solved the problem until i tried prime95 again in vista and again it still restarts during games and immediately in prime95. My temps are also ok CPU is at 40c full load and mobo 35c.

So i am out of ideas now, the only thing bugging me is the PSU issue as this is the only changed component since the move form the UK to brazil. But my PSU in the UK was a Tagan 400W and i was running all four 1 gig sticks of ram (4 gigs in total), and extra DVD RW and an extra HD and the system was fine. This new PSU is slightly higer 430W and its a good brand (Thermaltake).

Also i have noticed that people here tend to use these things called Estabilizadores (Stabilisers) which i am not familiar with, but i think they protect against over voltage, but could i have an under voltage problem.

I also used speedfan to test the rails and it reports as follows...

Vcore 1.26v (i set this to 1.30 in BIOS)
+12v 11.35v (idle in vista 64)
AVcc 3.28v

So i am thinking voltage problems or simply something could have damaged during the move.

could anyone help!
 
1 Precautionary step I'd advise you take is either get whatever the locals use/call a stabilizer or get a UPS (Uninterruptible power supply) and or surge strip that's backed by a protection guarantee to protect your computer from any possible electrical problems.

Moving on to the problem, try feeding your ram a little more voltage, if the problem only occurs when you have multiple sticks then the board might not be supplying enough power anymore for all 4 sticks to work at the same time. If that doesn't work, up the voltage on your cpu just a tad, to make sure that's not the source of the problem. If none of that works, post back and we'll look for a new cause.
 
Thanks

Already tried taking out the 3 other DIMMs and upping the voltage on the only 1 gig stick, then tried memtest86+ on it overnight and its stable, its only when i use prime95 in vista64 or using games or anything intensive and pc immediately resets (while using the 1 gig stick).

I will buy the UPS or stabilzer tomorrow as a precautionary step.
 
Depends on where you live I guess, just saying that you might want to protect your system if the power feeds to your house are a bit iffy (especially since the locals use stabilizers, that's kind of strange). So have you tried upping the voltage on the cpu? Sounds like when the CPU is forced to do something that loads it, therefore increasing power draw, it's restarting on you. Don't do a major jump in voltage, up it a little at a time till you're maybe 1.4-1.5 vcore in the bios, the Q6600's are sturdy chips, they'll withstand it (I ran my OCed at 3.6 on 1.5vcore 😛).
 
The problem your haveing is that TT Pure Power is just under what your system needs under heavy use. You need to get a bigger PSU.
 
Doesn't necessarily have to be the PSUs fault you know, could very well be an increased vdroop because the system as a whole isn't getting the proper or stable amounts of power needed, but yes it is a possibility.
 
Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
The problem your haveing is that TT Pure Power is just under what your system needs under heavy use. You need to get a bigger PSU.
Click to expand...

I am thinking that this might be the case but i used to use a Tagan 400w (30W less than the TT) and i had an extra 3 sticks of ram, a network card, an extra HD and extra DVD RW and in the UK it was rock solid. Now i am practically barebones and i get instabilities with any stress.

I will try upping the vdroop and the vcore even more (was afraid to go past 1.3 which is what its set to in the BIOS) but speedfan reports it 1.26v

 
Thing is, that isn't plausible in the sense that if you stripped your system down to the bare essentials, the power draw should be significantly lower, therefore should work just fine. There's obviously another problem that only occurs during the load but I'm not quite sure what is causing it.
 
Tagan makes a much better PSU then TT does. Chances are teh TT offers less amps on the 12V rails then the Tagen did. Thuse leading to your problem.
 
Every current Tagan power supply appears to handle 115-240 VAC, 50/60 Hz. I'm surprised that yours wouldn't.

If it's consistently rebooting after a given regimen (like starting up Prime95), then it's likely NOT a line voltage issue. The easiest way to determine if it's because you have a power supply current issue would be to remove the video card, replacing it with an old PCI card that draws near-zero current. The other stuff that you removed don't really draw that much power compared to your CPU and video card, and some don't even use the 12V signal.

If that fixes the problem, then you need a different power supply.
 
I went out and bought a stabiliser and pluged the PSU cord into it and now the PC wont even boot. What it does is turns on, all the fans spin and tries to post then system restarts and tries to do the same over again continuously. Its almost like the stabiliser isnt giving me enough juice. When i plug the PSU DIRECTLY into the wall socket it posts and boots into vista but again system will reset when i stress it with Prime95.

The system not being able to post properly has also happened to me the very 1st time when plugged into directly from the PSU into the wall socket but when i had all 4 sticks of ram and Harddrives and DVD RWs. When running barebones 100% of the time its posts and i can boot into vista.

I was reading about the volts in brazil and apparently the standard is 110v, the side of the box of the stabilizer says it accepts from 120v and the thermaltake PSU accepts from 115v.

RebateMonger, I will try and find a cheap PCI GFX card to test your theory.

thanks for all your suggestions so far.
 
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