random soft reboots

[Kennysan]

Hello. My newly built machine gives me random soft reboots. There's no blue screen of death. I have no warnings that it will reboots--it just happens randomly. So far, it's happened twice, once, while playing a video game, and a second time while I was just chatting online, which makes me think that it's not a heat problem, since the machine seems to work fine after one of these soft reboots. Right now, according to Asus' pc probe, my CPU and mobo temperature register at 33 and 37 C, respectively. This is what's in my box:

Athlon X2 3800+ socket AM2
Coolermaster Centurion 5 (although I've left the case side off since I've put this together, so I've never tested it with the whole case enclosed).
MSI Nvidia 9700gt
2 hard drives (1 raptor 75, 1 caviar 250gig)
antec 500W smart power PSU
ASUS M2N-SLI deluxe mobo
OCZ platinum ram, 2 1gig sticks

All the fans are stock, and I'm not overclocking anything.
I would think this would look like a power supply problem, but I somehow doubt a 500W antec PSU wouldn't be supplying enough power for this rig...
I've read about people having problems with OCZ ram and the new AM2 boards, but mine just booted up fine with it. Could it be a ram timing issue, or something else? I really would like some suggestions on what parts I should examine to try and remove this problem.

 

[sisq0kidd]

Originally posted by: Kennysan

MSI Nvidia 9700gt

That's your problem right there. You have a video card from the future with no drivers to support it yet.



Although you check the temperature with Asus probe while typing, it only tells you the idle temperature. Can you check how high it goes under load?

You can run some tests to stress certain parts of your computer. Try prime, memtest, etc to isolate each hardware piece.

I would also check the event viewer to see if there were any errors reported as to why your computer rebooted.

 

[Kennysan]

So, a reboot just happened a few minutes ago. I ran memtest, and my computer's memory seems to check out. I don't know what prime is, though, or what it would test.

I ran the asus temp probe after the reboot, and my comp read a 41 C CPu temperature, and a 37 degree mobo temp. This was literally less than a minute after the soft reboot happened.

I also checked the event viewer, and there were no associated events with the reboot. I was on AIM and reading some comics on a DVD when the reboot happened.

Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[imported_Truenofan]

i'v been having the same problem, even with a fresh install of windows...if someone can help us out. how do you check event viewer....though its happening the same way as he's describing it, im getting just random reboots. its only been happening recently, memtest checks out for me as well too, i'v downclocked mine back to stock and its still happening to me. im probly gonna upgrade to a core 2 duo, but if someone can help me out in figuring out whats going wrong i would be very grateful.

 

[RelaxTheMind]

CPUs can cool down quite quick between loading and being able to open a program to check the temps. So if your cpu temp is spiking you would ever really know.

besides that soft reboots like that can be many things such as driver issues compatability problems blah blah. (even malware) all of which can leave event viewer clean.

I would start out with just a hard drive connected and an older video card if you have one. then work your way up from there one component at a time. This is fairly easy to do with XP.

Once I found a bad loose pin on of the molex connectors on a cd drive.

 

[Kennysan]

Well, your idea sounds great, except the soft reboot happens so rarely (3 times in one week) that I have absolutely no idea what causes it, much less how to recreate the problem. I checked the windows event log after a recent crash, but there were no errors associated with the reboot. Does this mean this is more likely to be a PSU problem, compared to a processor problem?

I also finished running memtest for like half a day, and my OCZ ram checked out OK with no errors.

One of my friends suggested checking out the power supply,but is there any way to really "test" if a power supply is good or not? The reboots seemed to happen more often when my computer was doing some non-intensive tasks (AIM and browsing a CD).

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd appreciate them.