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New PC freezes during game play in BF2

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I think I have a heat problem because after a while, BattleField 2 freezes for around 20 sec and then resumes. It is quite cool in the basement, but I cannot lick this problem.

But first, here is my system:

4 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives
1 ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
1 Antec 120mm Case Cooling Fan
1 Antec LifeStyle SONATA II ATX Mid Tower Case
1 eVGA 256-P2-N517-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
1 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
1 MITSUMI Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive
1 NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner
1 Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2
1 SAMSUNG Combo Drive Black IDE
1 ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro Cooling Fan with Heatsink
1 CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 433 TWINX2048-3500LLPRO
1 Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply
1 CREATIVE SOUND CARD X-FI PLATINUM
Right off the bat my PC would function fine, so long as I did not try to do anything with video. Media player, games, an PC Mark all made my PC freeze. However, it has NEVER crashed...

I turned off the PEG link the MB BIOS which was stopping me from running PC Mark and games period.
Removing the side panel, adding a front intake fan, as well as 2 rear slot exhaust fans helped a bit.
Then I changed the RAM from Patriot to the Corsair above - no difference.
And finally got a new heatsink and fan - the Artic Cooler. This drastically reduced my idle temps to 40C for the Asus and 39C for the CPU with the side panel off, but the problem still exists.
My GeForce 7800GT OC idles at 42C with an alarm at 115C which is default in the nVidia control panel. The GPU alarm has never sounded.
I have SATA drives, so small cables. The IDE cables are out of the airflow path.
My A8N32 heat alarm through Asus Probe II sounded yesterday, but I was still able to play. I think a temp of only 45C is causing my CPU to stop responding.

What SHOULD my fanless mobo temperature be? And the Athlon 64 X2 temperature?!

Anyone have any ideas?

More about : freezes game play bf2

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Homebuilt system Expert

Are the 4 hard drives running in any sort of RAID 0 or 5?

Is cpu at stock clocks? (no OCing while trying to nail down basic freeze/hang/pause issues please)

(Use default Microsoft IDE drivers, and not NVidia IDE/RAID drivers, as the latter have definitely been known to cause probs...)

Is MS Office installed? (some MS Office apps in the past will look to the floppy periodically, which can cause temp hang-ups for said access..you can disable floppy seek in BIOS or disconnect it to rule it out)

Any antivirus apps installed? (Disable them while testing)

You can also try using Nvidia's OC tools to underclock gpu/mem clocks by 10-20 MHz each to rule out overheating video card...

Get latest gpu drivers, latest SLI /chipset drivers, review all BIOS settings, get latest sound card drivers, latest Direct x, etc., on a USB flash drive if one is available, then try a full format /reinstall using a single hard drive, single stick of mem in an approved slot (with conservative default auto/SPD timings while testing); you can even omit the sound card using onboard or no sound while isolating....add X-Fi later if games are lag/freeze free... (Even Media Player freezes?? Ouch!)

Have you checked your cpu fan to make sure it's seated correctly on the cpu? Sometimes they dont sit square and it can cause overheating. However, playing battlefield, if that was the case I dont think it would take 20 minutes to overheat.
Do you have the latest Nvidia drivers?
Make sure your antivirus autoprotect and your internet worm protection are both turned off before playing BF2. I had a problem with worm protection popping up every 10 seconds while I played BF2 and sometimes it would cause a lockup. What size is your power supply?
Is it SLI approved?

The 4 HDD's are in RAID 0+1 on the nVidia SATA connectors.

I am running everything at the default settings - no OC.

I am using the nVidia RAID drivers.

MS Office 2003 Pro is installed, but I have no floppy at this time. I unplugged everything but HDD's & video card during initial trials with 3D Mark 03, 05, and 06. I have disabled antivirus in the past, but lately I have not been doing that. I will check tonight.

I looked at underclocking, but the thing started yelling at me about warranty. I will try that as well.

X-Fi card was just added yesteday. I have latest drivers for everything.

I am not ready for a full system wipe just yet... But I could use on of my RAID 1 backup drives and restore it afterwards.

Anything else yoiu have for me?

Both CPU coolers were having trouble, and I believe I got them both down good. I ordered the Zalman today to try.

All latest drivers.

I do not get any worm pop-ups but I will disable Norton Antivirus as I used to.

The PS is an add-on becaus at first I did not believe I was getting enough power. It is SLI approved. 550W.

I don't care about the threshold warnings at this point - I only got it once - this past week. I have had the problem since day one...

I got some Arctic Silver with my Arctic cooler, so I will try that before swapping the cooler to the Zalman.

BIOS is latest version - has been since first week.

Thanks.
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