- Aug 29, 2008
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Hey all.
So I recently purchased a brand new Q6850 Quad Core CPU from Intel which I added to my existing config consisting of an Antec 900 Case, EVGA 680i mobo, 4gb of OCZ PC2 6400 Platinum ram and a Geforce 8800GTS 320mb all running on a 650watt Silverstone Strider PSU. After installing the CPU I was running into some issues with my system rebooting randomly. I downloaded Speed Fan and noted that the core temperatures were high, so I purchased a new CPU Heatsink for the system, the OCZ Vendetta which did wonders dropping my core temps from a blistering 70C at max to a cool 48C under full load running Prime95.
For a week or so my system didn't reboot once until I was playing Mass Effect and then, low and behold the system rebooted. After loosing a bit of progress in the game I didn't feel like loading it up again so it was another few days before the system crashed again while playing Spore. I thought maybe it was my GPU causing the issues and since it was starting to get old, I decided it was time to buy a new GPU so I got an EVGA GTX 260 Super Clocked. I decided to load up Gears of War since it stuttered quite a bit with the old card, and my god the GTX 260 is a beautiful card! Everything ran smooth as silk on the max settings and I was really enjoying myself until out of nowhere the system rebooted again after about 2 hours of play. Hmmm...
So I stop playing games for about a week and my system is stable as pie. Not a single hitch except for 1 lockup while streaming an HD movie on gametrailers.com but this was a system lock (IE windows freezing) and not the random rebooting of my system like all the other errors, so its likely it was just windows XP getting befuddled.
Then Fallout 3 is released and I buy myself a copy as soon as it hits store shelves. I run home, install the baby and play for about 6 hours until my system randomly reboots. I sigh, but seeing as how fallout 3 is more addictive than crack, I simply let windows reboot and I'm back in the game within 5 minutes. I run around enjoying the gorgeous vistas for about another 2 minutes before my system reboots again. WTF? Again I let windows restart but this time I don't load up the game and my system is stable for the rest of the night until I shut it down to go to sleep (about 7 hours)
So now I've bought a new Heatsink and a new GPU yet the system is still rebooting but it only appears to be doing so while I'm playing games. So I decided to ask my room mate who happens to be a tech for Best Buy if he had a program that I could run to test all of my components to see if anything is failing. I can't remember the name of the program he gave me off the top of my head, but lets just say it ran (booting to the CD from system start) for over 18 hours before all the tests were completed in the full diagnosis mode and EVERYTHING in the system passed. Not one test failed.
I'm thinking that my PSU might be the problem so that's the next in line to be replaced. Possibly I don't have enough wattage to run everything in my system for an extended period of time? According to Thermaltake's PSU Calculator the first time I ran it, my system only needed about 350 wats to run but now its telling me I need about 700W of power to run my system at a 90% load. Does that sound right?
So I recently purchased a brand new Q6850 Quad Core CPU from Intel which I added to my existing config consisting of an Antec 900 Case, EVGA 680i mobo, 4gb of OCZ PC2 6400 Platinum ram and a Geforce 8800GTS 320mb all running on a 650watt Silverstone Strider PSU. After installing the CPU I was running into some issues with my system rebooting randomly. I downloaded Speed Fan and noted that the core temperatures were high, so I purchased a new CPU Heatsink for the system, the OCZ Vendetta which did wonders dropping my core temps from a blistering 70C at max to a cool 48C under full load running Prime95.
For a week or so my system didn't reboot once until I was playing Mass Effect and then, low and behold the system rebooted. After loosing a bit of progress in the game I didn't feel like loading it up again so it was another few days before the system crashed again while playing Spore. I thought maybe it was my GPU causing the issues and since it was starting to get old, I decided it was time to buy a new GPU so I got an EVGA GTX 260 Super Clocked. I decided to load up Gears of War since it stuttered quite a bit with the old card, and my god the GTX 260 is a beautiful card! Everything ran smooth as silk on the max settings and I was really enjoying myself until out of nowhere the system rebooted again after about 2 hours of play. Hmmm...
So I stop playing games for about a week and my system is stable as pie. Not a single hitch except for 1 lockup while streaming an HD movie on gametrailers.com but this was a system lock (IE windows freezing) and not the random rebooting of my system like all the other errors, so its likely it was just windows XP getting befuddled.
Then Fallout 3 is released and I buy myself a copy as soon as it hits store shelves. I run home, install the baby and play for about 6 hours until my system randomly reboots. I sigh, but seeing as how fallout 3 is more addictive than crack, I simply let windows reboot and I'm back in the game within 5 minutes. I run around enjoying the gorgeous vistas for about another 2 minutes before my system reboots again. WTF? Again I let windows restart but this time I don't load up the game and my system is stable for the rest of the night until I shut it down to go to sleep (about 7 hours)
So now I've bought a new Heatsink and a new GPU yet the system is still rebooting but it only appears to be doing so while I'm playing games. So I decided to ask my room mate who happens to be a tech for Best Buy if he had a program that I could run to test all of my components to see if anything is failing. I can't remember the name of the program he gave me off the top of my head, but lets just say it ran (booting to the CD from system start) for over 18 hours before all the tests were completed in the full diagnosis mode and EVERYTHING in the system passed. Not one test failed.
I'm thinking that my PSU might be the problem so that's the next in line to be replaced. Possibly I don't have enough wattage to run everything in my system for an extended period of time? According to Thermaltake's PSU Calculator the first time I ran it, my system only needed about 350 wats to run but now its telling me I need about 700W of power to run my system at a 90% load. Does that sound right?
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