Weird system crashes

Undeadish

Junior Member
Jul 11, 2009
1
0
0
Dear Anandtech community.

I am writing to you because I've had a serious problem with my PC for the last two months. I am running a 520W Trust (yeah, not too great I know) PSU and an ATI 4850 1gb card.

My full specs are, from DXDIAG
<System tab
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP Proffessional (5.1, build 2600)
Processor: Intel (R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9300 @ 2.50 GHz (4 CPUs)
Memory: 3070 MB RAM
DirectX Version: Direct X 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Display tab
Device Name: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6936 (Engelsk)
Driver Date: 16-03-2009 22:26:14
Driver DDI Version: ati2mtag.sys
DirectDraw Acceleration: Activated
Direct3D Acceleration: Activated
AGP Texture Acceleration: Activated


The problem
Whenever I do something high-graphical (Like Oblivion on High/Ultra High) my system randomly crashes. The crash I get is in form of a weird pictures of vertical or horizontal lines on my screen; the color is often different. The sound from the ½ second before the crash will loop and keep playing, and my system does not respond to anything at ALL. So I have to do a hard reboot by holding down the power button. I have never experianced this while not doing anything graphical, like browsing the net, I have however experianed it while doing a stresstest with ATITool.



Any solutions/tips/help? I REALLY appreciate it.

Thanks loads in advance,
Nicolai
 

mpilchfamily

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2007
3,559
1
0
Your PSU is inadiquate to suit your system needs. Get a better quality 520W unit and you should be good to go. Your current PSU doesn't offer enough of its power to the 12V rails. Which is the cause of your problems. Better quality PSU will offer more to the 12V rails where the system needs it most.