Ok, so I made 3 upgrades to my computer recently. I wanted a new CPU and stronger GPU for gaming. I got the 6 core Thuban AMD CPU, and I got the Nvidia Geforce GTX 550 Ti. Also, b/c of the GPU, I also got a 500W power supply (this GPU requires minimum 400W) . I got everything installed by a technician. The first night, I played through 5 chapters of Super Meat Boy with no problem. But once I started playing Skyrim, the problems began. The first time, after maybe about 30 minutes, my monitor just shut off without warning, but my tower remained on. My new power supply has a switch, so I just flipped it, waited a moment, and rebooted. I tried running Kingdoms Of Amalur, and that was even worse. Once into the main game screen, it lasts I think less than 10 minutes before the monitor fails and shuts off. This happened every other time I tried to play Kingdoms of Amalur since (my PC was serviced Saturday morning, and I started trying out games Saturday night, 2 days ago). Surprisingly, last night when I tried running Skyrim, it actually lasted pretty long before the monitor shut down, considering Skyrim is such a demanding game, but I think it lasted about 30 minutes, just like the last time it failed. However, more concerning is that, I also tried Super Meat Boy again, and this time I played in window mode so I could maybe see what really happens. I could not even get halfway through Ch 1 before I got a brief blue screen which I didn't have enough time to read what it said.
Finally, I also do video encoding. Specifically, H.264 encoding. So, I have my program set to use the max number of cores. Twice, I encoded a short video (3-4 minutes), and both times, the monitor shut down almost immediately after the encoding was done, and the tower remained on. If I was doing a longer encode, the monitor would fail before it could even finish.
Unfortunately, I have deduced several possible causes, but cannot thoroughly confirm what the cause is.
- GPU overheating: the GPU does have it's own fan, and I updated to the latest drivers.
- CPU overheating: Before the guy serviced my rig, I noticed that the heatsink and fan which came with the cpu had thermal paste on it already. I pointed this out to him, and thought that that paste would be enough. I knew beforehand that 6 cores would generate more heat, but I thought the factory paste would be good enough. I may have been wrong, and given the fact that video encoding is almost purely CPU driven, and the fact that my encoding caused shutdown, I believe my cpu overheating is the most likely cause, hopefully, better thermal paste would fix the problem.
- Power Supply: In theory, my power supply should be more than sufficient for the GPU I installed, and I'm sure it was installed properly. This might be a stupid question, but could it be my electrical outlet is not sufficient enough? I think I have 3-4 other devices plugged into the power surge, including my monitor and printer.
- DirectX 11: My initial setup was dual-core, integrated graphics with 256MB VRAM, and DirectX 9.0 c. , and a 250W power supply. Despite these inferior specs, I never had this problem before with this PC, even while playing Skyrim (which I played many hours, at about 13 fps).
- DVI-to-VGA Adapter: I'm having to use this until I buy a monitor with an HDMI port. I'm not sure if the adapter is screwed all the way in or not, and I never had any problem when I had a direct connection. Since the tower itself does not shut off when this problem occurs, could my monitor connection be faulty?
That's all I can think of at the moment. Here is a quick reference:
Power Supply: 500W
GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 550 Ti
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 "Thuban" 1045T 2.7 GHz 95W TDP
RAM: 5 GB (2 GB x 2, 1 GB x1)