Portal -- Periodic System Beep and Screen Flicker

[bulletproofman19]

I have a 1 year old system. E6400 (no overclock), 2 Gigs of RAM, Ati 1950 Pro, etc. I have a 1280x720 widescreen resolution and get solid performance in games like World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2 and BF2142. I recently broke into Portal (part of the Orange Box) and am having a slight problem. I can play for a couple of minutes with no problems, but eventually the system speaker will emit a single beep roughly every 15 seconds, which is accompanied by a slight screen flicker. I don't think I'm having any overheating problems, but this worries me, so I have not stuck with Portal for more than a few minutes of this.

I updated my video drivers to the latest.

Any other thoughts on how to fix this issue?

Thank you in advance.

 

[robisbell]

sounds like a power issue from the info you've provided.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Or a cooling issue. Have you checked voltages and temps?

 

[bulletproofman19]

I have a temperature LCD on the front of my case. I'm not sure exactly where the sensor is inside, but during Portal I'm around 95F, which seems pretty cool to me. I guess I should download CPU-Z for better measurements. How can I check voltages?

How could I troubleshoot further to find if this is a power issue? I do not have any extra power supplies laying around.

Thank you both.

 

[robisbell]

get PC Wizard instead.

 

[bulletproofman19]

Ok, I ran Portal until I started getting the beeps, then I quit out and immediately took this screenshot from PC Wizard:

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/2223/pcwizardyg0.jpg

Are there any other screenshots that would help?

 

[robisbell]

video card temp is 154.4F, kind of high I'd be concerned. voltages appear okay, would need the exact make and model of mobo to do any more troubleshooting.

 

[bulletproofman19]

I have an ASUS P5W-DH 975 X CROSSFIRE.

Do you think I should turn off my ATI Overdrive?

 

[bulletproofman19]

I disabled the ATI Hotkey Poller Service, which some site said was related to ATI Overdrive. With this change, my GPU got as hot as 91C / 195F, but I didn't have any problems. But from what you're saying, my temp was high before, so I'm not sure that this is the right solution if I want to keep my graphics card alive for the near future.

 

[bulletproofman19]

any thoughts from anyone?

 

[robisbell]

check airflow, and give the video card a thorough cleaning.
manually check voltages as well with a multimeter.

 

[bulletproofman19]

I took my graphics card out, and blasted it with compressed air. Got a good amount of dust out of the heat sink and fan areas. Just played Portal for an hour at 65C, no problems.

Thank you!

 

[robisbell]

glad to be of service. enjoy!