Monitor drops to power save mode while gaming

[Rinulin]

I've got a brand spanking new computer that I built just a week ago. The specs are:

Chaintech VNF4 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3000 CPU
Seagate 80 GB SATA Hard drive
1 GB Corsair Value Select Ram
Chaintech nVidia 6600GT PCI Express Video Card
Stock 350w PSU that comes with the CoolerMaster Centurion5 case (350 watt, 16 amps on the 12 volt rail)
22" NEC CRT Monitor

I started playing Warcraft III last night and on two different occasions the monitor would drop into power save mode. The power light was still on for the computer, but I had no way of telling whether the computer had restarted or not. Nothing could wake up the system up other than pressing the restart button.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance . . .

 

[hertz9753]

Try turning off power saving.

 

[Rinulin]

Turning off power saving doesn't help.

I've even upgraded my power supply to increase the amps on the 12 volt rail. I am now using a Antec 350 watt PSU with 21 amps on the 12-volt.

Essentially the system crashes and I have to press the restart button to be able to do anything.

 

[krcat1]

It could be that the Video card or the CPU is overheating, causing the system to crash.

What is your cooling setup?

 

[Fern]

A while ago I had that problem... It was a Ti 4200 I had installed.

Deleted and reinstalled drivers fixed it (AND closely followed instructions the next time. I made a mistake when upgrading to the newer drivers. Originally installed those on the disk that came with the card, then immediately updated).

Fern

 

[ZYFER]

when you mentioned power-save mode it was like a yellow or orange color light or still like-on green?

 

[Rinulin]

I said that it dropped into power save mode, but in retrospect, I don't think that was entirely accurate.

What happens is that the the screen goes black like it does when I power down the computer. The monitor displays the same message it normally does during shut down. However, the power light on the computer stays green, and I don't hear any change to the other components. It appears that the computer is still on, but with the monitor down, there's no way that I can tell.

I don't believe that there is a problem with the cooling setup for the computer in general. The Centurion 5 has a 120mm fan in the rear, and a 80mm fan in the front. I have confirmed that both are working.

I'm going to try downloading the latest nVidia video drivers tonight and see if those help.

 

[Rinulin]

Originally posted by: Fern
A while ago I had that problem... It was a Ti 4200 I had installed.

Deleted and reinstalled drivers fixed it (AND closely followed instructions the next time. I made a mistake when upgrading to the newer drivers. Originally installed those on the disk that came with the card, then immediately updated).

Fern

So should I have not installed the drivers that came on the CD included with the card?

I was going to try the new nVidia drivers tonight, should I remove the old drivers first?

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: Rinulin

Originally posted by: Fern
A while ago I had that problem... It was a Ti 4200 I had installed.

Deleted and reinstalled drivers fixed it (AND closely followed instructions the next time. I made a mistake when upgrading to the newer drivers. Originally installed those on the disk that came with the card, then immediately updated).

Fern

So should I have not installed the drivers that came on the CD included with the card?

I was going to try the new nVidia drivers tonight, should I remove the old drivers first?

Well IIRC, mine displayed the orange light.

Still worth a try though.

CD's fine. When I went to update the driver I didn't follow the instructions carefully. Or I should say I wasn't paying too much attention. I was fiddling with something else at the time.

Here was my problem- when you update drivers, you'll get little windows/message boxes. This one said something like "the file you about to overwrite is newer than the update. Do you want to keep the newer file? Recommend YES"

So not paying attention, I hit "yes" (like it said)

BAD MOVE. Sometimes newer drivers contain OLDER files.

So when I opted to keep the "newer" file, I eneded up with a "mix" of drivers. That caused my problem.

If you read nVidia's instructions. IIRC, this is mentioned

EDIT: Went to nvidia's site. This is no longer mentioned. It was quite a while ago when I did this though (back in the ti4200 days). So you may not have done the same thing. Still, removing and reinstalling is prolly not a bad idea.

 

[Rinulin]

Updating to the new 71.84 drivers from nVidia fixed my problem. Thanks for all the suggestions.