Maybe a power supply issue, mayeb not?

[prevailing]

I have the current set up

Gigabyte GA-7DX motherboard
1.4 ghz athlon
GE Force 3
various CD roms, DVD and CDRW
Two hard drives, one 15 gig and one 8
soundblaster live
and a Sparkle 400 watt PS

Now here is the problem. I play Video games a lot, and it only happens when I play video games. I will be playing, and the fan on the computer will start to whine in a lower frequency and the game will slow down to a snails pace or stop completely for maybe 5-10 seconds, and then the fan whine will return to normal and the game continues playing at normal speed. This may not happen for a few hours and then it could happen twice with a single hour. Its really frustrating, especially when I play Asherons Call and die due to it. What do you think guys?

Edit* This has not been overclock for the last two months at least. and I onyl started recently playing video games in the past 2 months. The Athlon was retail and is at standard 1400mhz.

 

[prevailing]

bump

 

[Mavrick007]

You don't have anything else running at the same time do you? How is the heat when at full load?
Try running an intensive program like Prime95 and see if that does the same thing.
It seems like something is drawing power from your machine and that's surprising since Sparkle is a good quality psu and you say that it's 400Watts too which is more than enough for what you have.

 

[ojai00]

It could be that the fan on your video card is messed up. Try playing the game with another video card and see if you still get the same problem. If you do, it could be a power supply problem, but Sparkle makes durable power supplies. Hope this helps.

 

[Dreadogg]

also check to make sure nothing else in the house in drawing large amounts of electricity!