Is my Graphics card causing my computer to freeze or turn off?

[TsBPhoenix]

Im new to building PC's this is my first time thats how new, the problem I keep having is that my PC freezes when I seem to change the EPU settings from Max Power Saving Mode to any of the others it seem to either be a Graphics problem as it will freeze or a Power problem as it turns my PC off Automatically but freezes more then turns off, any advice would be much appriciated.

PC Setup

Motherboard - M4AB7TD ASUS
Graphics - EAH5450 SILENT ASUS
PSU - Alpine 750W
CPU - AMD Phenom II Black Edition
HDD - 1TB Seagate
RAM - 2 x 4Gb Corsair + 2 x 4Gb Corsair Vengence

 

[Majcric]

This is not the questioned you asked. But is your MB flashed to latest Bios. The Gigabyte board in my sig had funky power issues before it was updated.

 

[TsBPhoenix]

I doubt it is flashed as i have no idea how to do this

 

[nitromullet]

In my experience gpu problems often involve some sort of visual artifacting that will occur during gaming or other heavy gpu related activity. In cases where the card was defective enough to fail simply sitting on the desktop the issue would occur no matter what other settings were tinkered with elsewhere.

I would look into replacing the power supply.

Not exactly scientific, but there are way too many reports of failure for the number of reviews on amazon.co.uk for me to be confident what that PSU.

edit - I believe your motherboard has on board video. Take the card out, and see if the issue persists. If it does it's definitely not the video card. I should point out that even if it does not occur without the video card installed that does not mean the video card is the problem. It could still be a PSU issue caused by the increased current draw from the video card.

PSU issues are some of the most annoying to diagnose, since any changes to the system can also affect the PSU. The best thing to do if you suspect the PSU is either borrow a known good PSU or replace your current one with a better one to see if the problem resolves itself.

 

[TsBPhoenix]

Thank you Nitromullet but my Mobo doesnt have a Video Card Built in unfortunatly, but i will borrow a friends think he has a 550W Corsair which ive heard are quite good will update when i know if its worked or not cheers

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Issues with the GPU will often present in the way of visual artefacts first, a sort of visual snow if the vRAM is having issues and misplaced vertices on geometry if the GPU is having problems.

Best thing to do is stress the video card deliberately and see if you can artificially cause it to fail, the ultimate test is Furmark but I think there's failsafes now active for video cards that detect the app and throttle the card, you might need to disable them first before proper testing will work, you'll soon know if its unstable.

You can do the same for memory and CPU tests using something like Prime95 (one instance per physical CPU core) stress the crap out of that, it will fail really fast if that's the issue.

Worth graphing temps of both CPU and GPU when you're putting them under extreme load and posting the results here so we can see if they're expected or not.