is it the mobo or the psu? or the ram?!

[spanky]

i am having issues with my rig and i believe it is either the psu or the mobo. i really do not wan to believe it is the psu, becuz i just replaced the mofo. i had a 550w enermax... my machine would randomly reboot in windows no matter what i was doing. so i replaced the enermax with a 300w antec. the rebooting went away and was only isolated to whenever i exit GTA3. so i figured i didn't like that game all that much anyway, so i didn't care. but tonite, i am playing CS for about 15 mins... and my monitor goes black. i'm like what the smurf? look at my tower and realized my machine rebooted itself. FORK! ok whatever... i was in a CS'ing mood so i skipped the stinking checkdisk and logged right back into the frickin' server i was playing in. so another 15 mins of CS'ing... i'm in dust2... jumped on top of a box... spotted a CT hiding... zero'ing in on his head... pressed the left mouse buttong... screen goes black. what in the hell?! i look at my tower, and again realize it is rebooting itself. FVG!!!! so i'm really friggin' pissed off now... especially since i was gonna frag that stoopid CT. skip checkdisk and march straight back to the same server... and frag away for another 5 minutes... and my rig reboots itself. again. at this point, i'm ok... ok... u fuggin' win u piece of shEEt. now... whenever i am in normal windows... no crashes. only in CS... right smack in the middle of a game... it reboots itself. and like i said before... it also reboots itself whenever i exit out of GTA3. what do u guys think it is? i mean... the psu? AGAIN?!?! what are the chances? could a flakey mobo does this? i am also kinda hesitant to blame the memory as i have had this problem with two different sticks of ram. this is really quite aggrevating. just a notes... i am running a non-o/c'ed xp2000+.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

you running XP ...? if so a good start is to turn off the no BSOD reboot shizz..Start>Control Panel>System>Advanced>StartupandRecovery>Settings ..turn off AutoReBoot..so you can get an BSOD and an error message..

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon
you running XP ...? if so a good start is to turn off the no BSOD reboot shizz..Start>Control Panel>System>Advanced>StartupandRecovery>Settings ..turn off AutoReBoot..so you can get an BSOD and an error message..

ohhh.... good idea

 

[spanky]

hmm... that did not seem to work. pc still reboots itself

 

[ScrapSilicon]

reboots without giving a BSOD ..?

 

[ScrapSilicon]

To change the recovery settings to disable automatic rebooting:

Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
Click the Advanced tab.
Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings to open the Startup and Recovery dialog box.
Clear the Automatically restart check box, and click OK the necessary number of times.
Restart your computer for the settings to take effect.
Now when you go to shut down and a fatal error occurs, you?ll at least see it and it won?t cause an automatic reboot.

 

[spanky]

i took the psu out of the crashing pc and put it in my backup rig. i was able to run CS quite nicely for about 30 mins without any problems. i guess i'll just have to wait for a new mobo to come in and see how it goes. *sigh*

 

[Slugbait]

It sounds like a heat problem to me. I wondered what the heck was up years ago with my P5/133 spontaneously rebooting just during games. Turns out the CPU fan was spinning at about 1/4 the speed it should have been, the brushes were worn out.

My GF3 Ti200 Personal Cinema card is only 6 months old, but the fan is almost locked up solid. Just found that out last week. Thank goodness I ran it at stock speeds until I got my Card Cooler for xmas. In fact, installing that puppy is how I found out about my card's fan going kaput. The GPU has way more air than ever before now, but that replacement fan is on its way anyway...

Check your fans, check your air intake, make sure cables and cards aren't blocking airflow. Check the fans in your PSU, too...after I installed my Enermax 350, it was two days before I figured out only one fan was operating (the 3-pin came unplugged)

 

[PCMarine]

Both the Enermax and Antec PSU's are top quality, I see you are running an Athlon XP, so I would check the temps. Possibly the HSF isn't making contact with the core or the thermal paste/pad is worn out.

 

[wetcat007]

Patch GTA 3 and that should get riud of XP conflicts as for random rebooting generally is something to do with PSU.

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: PCMarine
Both the Enermax and Antec PSU's are top quality, I see you are running an Athlon XP, so I would check the temps. Possibly the HSF isn't making contact with the core or the thermal paste/pad is worn out.

hmm... i did notice there was slight dust bunny build between the cpu heatsink and the fan. i'll try blasting it out with some compressed air. btw, i am using the retail amd hsf & not overclocking.

 

[0roo0roo]

ecs m/b? those don't like two sdram much

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
ecs m/b? those don't like two sdram much

where did u get that from? i am having problems with an epox 8k7a with 512mb pc2100.