Curse

Larcen · Nov 03, 2008, 05:08 PM // 17:08

Ok, so my woes continue. I seem to be stable for the most part now, no overclocking etc mind you. When playing GW everything is alright since I installed ntune and set my GPU fan to 100%. However, my friend needed a good machine to play a new game on, for the sake of advertising we'll say F3. Now, it auto detected high settings, and looks great. He played for several (approx 4 hrs) before any problems arised. Now, after playing for a bit and at random times after those few hours, one of a few things happens.

Graphics lag begins, and quickly gets worse until it nearly freezes. CTRL+ALT+DEL brings up the task manager where I can kill the 'Not Responding' process. Well, then my screen goes black as if I had shut the pc down. Power light goes from green to orange as if it had been sitting idle for too long. only way to get back to anything is to flip the switch to the power supply.

In another case, there was no warning (The gradual lag I spoke of) just went black and locked up like I spoke of previously as well. I'm blaming, and hoping, its just the heat. My CPU was hotter than it should have been, by the time I was able to get booted back up and everything, it was around 55c but quickly coming down from lack of load of course. Below are my specs, and I suppose I could use some recommendations on a good cooler.

MB: Intel 955XBK Socket 775
CPU: PD 3.0GHz
1Gig Corsair Ram Dual Channel
XFX 8600GTS

Any help is appreciated.

Quaker · Nov 03, 2008, 05:59 PM // 17:59

Usually, the first thing to do in this case is to open the machine up and make sure that all cooling fans are running (while powered up) and to blow any accumulated dust out of any and all heatsinks. This includes the fan(s) and heatsinks in the power supply.

If you need to clean or replace the fan or heatsinks in the PS, that may involve opening up the PS. If you do, make sure the power cable is unplugged (and allow the PS to discharge for a few mins) - there is a shock hazrd in the Power supply.

Beyond that, there are the usual driver conflicts, PS/GPU/CPU going bad, etc., etc.