Hi, my PC is switching itself off after 10-15 mins of graphic intensive gaming ie Med 2 or STALKER. It plays Rome 2 and IL-1946 for hours and hours on end. Vista tells me it's a hardware error - CPU, RAM, MOBO, or PSU, have you any idea how to begin troubleshooitbg this? i don't have anyone local i can interchange parts with to test them, my rig is moRe than up to playing the lastest games at good settings.

E4300 at stock
P5NE-SLI
2 GIG G-SKILL (BQ) RAM 6400 800MHZ
EVGA 7950GT KO SUP
X-CLIO GREATPOWER 750W PSU (MOD)

Any ideas?

I'm going to do some more testing with Oblivion and report back.

Since it takes a while to fail and seems to require heavy-duty gaming, it sounds like an overheating problem to me. Monitor your GPU's temp (most likely cause). If your case doesn't have good airflow, something else on the system board could be overheating -- if the CPU were overheating, it should just slow down, not fail. Another option is the power supply overheating -- the hotter a power supply gets, the less current it can supply, and you've got a real power hog of a graphics card.

And by the way that board is very capricious with same memory. Try running with just one or correct the timings a little bit.

Have you changed the Vcore settings? If so..it is possible the voltage may have been set too low which will cause reboots..especially after intensive gaming of around 15 to 20 minutes. Just a thought..good luck

I am having the exact same problem.

Here is my setup:
Asus M2N-Sli Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+
Corsair XMS2 Dominator 2GB PC2-6400
EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
Hard Drive 2X 120GB
Sony DVD+-RW
Thermaltake PurePower 480W

The power unit is old, which is why I thought that was the problem. I had to convert the MOB from 20pin to 24pin and the vid card from 2X4pin to 6pin. I've also tried setting the memory and cpu voltage to mfg.

Are the retail cpu or graphics units insufficient at cooling themselves?

Malazan, what is Oblivion testing, I don't know how to test something like this, I've never had major hardware malfunction?

How much amperage can that PSU of yours kick out to the 12V rails?

The one I have now only has one 12v rail at 18A I think. Thats why Im assuming its a power problem and not overheating at this point. If I were to get a new psu I've read that its better to get one large rail instead of multiple at 18A, is that true?

18Amps seems pretty shy and I'm guessing that your issue so it's probably a power problem, but just to make sure try using a different graphics driver. If things are still the same it's probably your PSU. See what happens if you run Orthos Blend and a graphic intense benchmark program like 3DMark.

I tracked it down to my GPU it was hitting 100C in Stalker and running in the 90's, ditto with Oblivion, i've RMA'D my card.

psu sucks

open your case up it the system runs longer its the psu

check the air from the psu is it realy hot? yes? its the psu

your could have a dead rail too!

It was my card - it was found to be faulty, i got a full refund, and tommorow i will be getting a nice cheap upgrade to a 8800GTS 320MB, for just £30.

I win!!!

lol!

9 out of 10 its the psu - will see!

Still having the same issues, the card is fine, my memory doesn't work well with this MOBO, and so it goes on and on and on, and on top of that i have a broken driver that i cannot get rid of, even with a format (which doesn't shift it either).