PSU question, or Peeved@reStartUps

kidkboom

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Apr 30, 2009
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I know how hateful it is to answer a question similar to one(s) already asked, and I'm sure I fall in that category; I will try to be short-spoken and succinct. After a year of trying to figure this one out on my own reckoning, I've got little to nothing.

So I bought what I thought was an awesome computer. I wanted to build one but I have no experience and only had 1 wad of money (ie no room for error) so I bought: a quad-core vista 64 tower with 8g ram and a 4870 512 radeon card, 500 gb hdd. this is from memory @ work and I will return tonight and post pertinent details including mobo which slips my mind atm.

As a note, I do 2 things: a lot of dubstep production, and pandering to a holmesian video game penchant that borders on addiction. some of you can relate. =) so electronic production and gaming are my only priorities.

so instead of a build I buy this computer, last year. I also bought oblivion and started playing right off.

within 2 days, i started getting my problem - during GRAFX intensive game moments, on HIGH-POWER GFX intense games, my PC restarts.

Now at first I wasn't panicked but since the pc was new I thought it was PSU. Guy on the phone at (<choke>, ibuypower) convinced me it was my software. i bought it and continued.

so it's months later and i see this happen: repetiviely on oblivion, also on fallout 3, also on gta 4 (had to uninstall and sell due to never getting 2m of play without restart), and occasionally on spore or swkotor, though for the most part those less-rigorous games never cause the problem. notably, microsoft games NEVER cause the problem such as aoe and xml based such as civ4 always work wonderfully.

So I acquired Alpha Protocol and the restarts start again. At this point I'm beginning to think PSU again and want to approach replacing it.

I apologize, I don't have the specs of my psu here for you now but I will post them in a couple hours as I know they're needed to understand the sitch. But as a little bg info, the restarts are NEVER a bsod; PC always turns right back on and doesn't seem worse for wear though I wouldn't know; ONLY happens during GFX intense games and only during certain parts, usually associable to a big GFX explosion or something;... and my GFX card never actually struggles or glitches to render anything, so with due respect i feel it wouldn't be the card or ram or processors or anything - but maybe not enough power on psu to feed GFX during HIGH-POWER moments?

Am I way off base? Is it impossible probably to tell without more specs? Does this kind of stuff happen to any of you PC-genii?

Anyway tell me what you can *if* you can, else ignore me, I will post all gatherable data in a few hours, after work.

I am willing to cut off my right hand and install it in the psu cage, if that's what it takes. *thinks* Probably woudn't work, though.
 
Definitely post the specs or make and model of the power supply in your system.

Get furmark, prime95, and hwmonitor. They are all free. Use HW monitor to watch your temps just to be sure they dont shoot up unexpectedly. Use furmark to put your GPU under load, that should run just fine and not cause your system to shut off. Next run Prime95, that will put your CPU under full load, that should run fine and rule out CPU issues. Next run them both at the same time, if your system shuts down instantly then its quite likely a problem of insufficient power.