System crash when GPU strained

[Igniseus]

Hi,

Basically, when i do anything to strain my GPU even the slightest, my pc completely crashes as if power was lost to it.

To keep things simple and easy to follow im going to list all the things ive tried, or important things. This way you can see what ive tried or use for example without reading lengthy paragraphs.

- Specs:
Radeon x1800xt
Antec Truepower 550w
asus a8n32-sli deluxe
3 sata drives
1 dvd-rw
2x1gb corsair 350LL pro RAM
athlon 64 3500+
if you want other or more detailed specs let me know

- highest temperatures monitored before crashes:
cpu: 35C
MB: 32C
HDD's: 38C
GPU: 55C

- GPU was working 100% fine on previous dfi infinity nf4 motherboard.

- PC is 100% stable as long as i dont do anythign to even minutely stress the GPU. i can watch movies, browse the web etc all fine but 15 seconds of a game or the ATI artifact scanner and it crashes.

- with the side panel of the case on, the pc crashed during windows installing within 2 minutes, however i have not tried it with windows installed, while booted i have the side panel off and a big desktop fan almost touching the components.

I'm really tired so cant think of anything else right now.

My only ideas are that certain parts of the card are overheating, which the sensor is not picking up due to being far away, or the card got damaged during changing MB, or the MB is damaged in someway, or perhaps (please god be this)the bios is not set up right.

Thanks for reading and i appreciate every last bit of help anyone can give.

 

[swifty_morgan]

The first thing I would do is put a different set of drivers in it. The newest ones aren't always the best.... and the ones that came on the disc with the card probably suck......

 

[ixion]

Crashes when Windows is installing are usually attributable to memory or hdd errors, have you tested the RAM in any way?

 

[scoobertscoobydoo]

you sure about the MB temp? this mb will crash if not properly cooled...

 

[Igniseus]

Crashes when Windows is installing are usually attributable to memory or hdd errors, have you tested the RAM in any way?

Yeah but this also happens with windows loaded, and ONLY happens when the GPU is stressed (e.g. rendering something in 3D), unless the case is sealed up.

 

[Igniseus]

you sure about the MB temp? this mb will crash if not properly cooled...

How much cooling does it want!? Is 5 case fans and 1 huge desktop fan not good enough!?

 

[scoobertscoobydoo]

you sure about the MB temp? this mb will crash if not properly cooled...

How much cooling does it want!? Is 5 case fans and 1 huge desktop fan not good enough!?

did you install the chipset fan? until i installed the fan the chipset ran at 50-60C.

 

[chuckshissle]

Stress test like of those Half Life:Lost Coast is very streneous for your pc and with unstable hardware specially the ram would shut the program or worst restarts the window. I have experience this first hand when I was overclocking my ram it was a value ram to begin with so it didn't handle it pretty well. With ram replacement Im able to complete the stress test with no shut down or restarts but slight temp increase from normal load.

 

[dmantech]

If your motherboard has a fan to cool the chipset it may have died and leaving the chipset to overheat.

 

[scoobertscoobydoo]

If your motherboard has a fan to cool the chipset it may have died and leaving the chipset to overheat.

it uses the abit heatpipes, the fan is optional.

 

[mwgorecki]

I am having a very similar problem. My week old system seems extremely stable, except when I try to play a game or run any of the 3D Mark benchmark tests. Windows XP Pro SP2 runs everything else fine. BTW, I got a score of 14308 in a registered version of 3D Mark 03 - even though the test paused several times during all the tests.

But my PC does not crash, it simple freezes for 20 seconds or so like you might see online with really bad lag. It has also crashed once while playing a video in Media Player 10.

I have tried all the drivers that were shipped to me, all the latest drivers, and even some older drivers I found. No test I can find to run in Windows produces any errors (except 3D benchmark tests - and then it is not even an error).

Memtest 86 v3.2 does not like any memory in any slot on my board. And when I say any memory - I mean not the 512 Corsairs in my wife's PC, not the 512 Kingmax in my brother-in-law's PC, and not the 512 Elixcir in an old PC. All DIMMs had a few failures during test 4, and hundreds during test 6 - the farthest I could get. The Memtest floppy ran fine on a PC at work...
I have my system running bare minimum right now - no CD's, floppy, sound, etc. I even upgraded to an Antec 550W PS because I thought it might be a poer problem.

Besides swapping RAM, I tried to but my wife's Athlon 64 3800+ into my system, but it would not post... I have no other PCIE cards or mainboards to try. The CPU temp is in the 40C range.

My system (all from NewEgg):


ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce SPP 100 ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 1GHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) 2-3-2-5
eVGA 256-P2-N517-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
4 Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives in RAID 0+1
Antec SONATA II Piano Black ATX Mid Tower Case 450Watt SmartPower 2.0
Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2
SAMSUNG Combo Drive Black IDE Model SH-M522C/BEBN
NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A
MITSUMI Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal USB 2.0 digital card reader with Floppy Drive
Antec 120mm Blue LED Light Case Cooling Fan
and I just added Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply
Does anyone have experience with this? Or a test I can run? I have been building PC's for nearly two decades, and I am stumped!

 

[mwgorecki]

Nevermind ... I changed the PEG mode to disabled and all seems well....