New setup cashing randomly... help!

[Lateralusxxx]

I just built this setup after christmas:

Intel core 2 duo e6400
elitegroup p965T-a Mobo
1gbx2 g.skill ddr2 800 ram
gigabyte 7600gt vid card
250sata HDD
BFG 650w PSU atx v2.0

It crashes at random times during games or high use. I can play civ 4 fine until i get to the point to where there are many units on the map and a lot of stuff is going on, then it just restarts. if i run prime 95 benchmark it restarts after the second or third test. If i take one stick of ram out leaving a single stick in, it does better but still crashes. I have the latest bios, the latest drivers etc. fresh windows install. I had an older PSU so i just bought another cause the old one wasnt atx 2.0... that didnt help.... i dont know whats going on here. I dont think its my ram, i ran memtest86 for 8 hours and there were 0 errors.

Help?

 

[Farmer]

Maybe you're overheating. From what you describe it as (random restarts w/o blue screens or error messages), it seems to either be a heat problem or a PSU problem.

 

[Lateralusxxx]

my old PSU maybe, but i just got a new PSU that was recommended and i dont think its heat either... all temps seem fine. every once and a while it shows a blue screen. is there any way to find out what it is for sure?

 

[wanderer27]

Normally I would say the PSU, but you've tried two and seem to have sufficient wattage - not sure of the amps on 12v, but I would guess that shouldn't be an issue with what you have.

Doing any OC'ing?

On my last MB swapout I had a few reboot/BSOD issues until I went and manually set the voltages for the CPU and Memory (it had been on Auto). I actually set the CPU voltage a little lower than spec and things have been pretty solid.

You may want to manually set your RAM timings as well, mine defaulted to a lot looser timings than what it's rated and had been running at before.

Civ 4 huh? Don't feel too bad there, a lot of people are still getting some CTD's and BSOD's on that one. I might get one every few days on that myself (very infrequent), but Simcity 4 (CPU hog) and Farcry(Graphics hog) run fine.

And welcome to the Forums.

 

[Lateralusxxx]

hmm, my ram speeds were set to what they were spec'd but i will look into the cpu voltages. and i have not tried to OC anything either.

 

[Lateralusxxx]

Update, i went to 'manage' when i right clicked "my computer" and went to the system event viewer and i was getting a 'Save Dump' error.
Source: Save Dump
Event ID: 1001
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x100000d1 (0x00000004, 0x000000ff, 0x00000000, 0x00000004). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini123106-01.dmp.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

This is so annoying

 

[DanDrop]

Could be your vid card is overheating. I don't play civ 4, try to lower resolution on the game or set the video options to minimum when playing and see if it improves.

 

[Lateralusxxx]

Ugh, i tried doing Civ4 at lower settings, it ran for a while then crashed, my computer is restarting, not shutting down if that makes any difference, then i get the save dump message again, with some other stuff in the events log.