PC Reboots, am I right? lol

Hi Guys,

Okay so I have come to the conclusion that my PSU is at fault but before handing over a couple of $$$ for the Corsair HX750W I want to make sure I am possibly doing the right thing.

My current rig,

Asus P5B Vista Plus MB
Intel E8400 (no overclock)
1 x MSI 275GTX Twinfrozr
4 x 1GB DDRII 800, Kingston value (going to change to 2x2g dominator 1066)
3 x 750GB Seagate SataII (raid 5 setup using MB controller)
DVD writer
2 x 120mm LED fans
1 x omege 600w PSU

Vista Ultimate x64, latest patches are installed

Currently the situation I have is when playing Battlefield 2, the game runs for sometimes 2 - 3 hours and then the PC just switches off, the switches back on (Bios is set to turn back on when power is restored after loss), however when playing Arkham asylum or COD world at war it only lasts from 5 - 30 minutes. I have checked the temps, cpu never goes of 51c, the MB is stable at 46c, the card sits between 41c at idle and 70c under load so I don't think its a temp thing. I was running the 191.07 forceware tried loading the latest 195 beta, with no change. If I run furmark, on 1024x1280 it crashes after about 5 seconds but 3dmark vantage runs on full blast for about 5 minutes then crashes.

I have removed the 3 750GB's and put just a single 320GB drive in because everytime the pc loses power the raid wants to rebuild and thats a pain, and the games seem to last a bit longer but the benchies still crash the same.

It all started after I installed the 275GTX, I was running the radeon x1550. When I first got the card I was able to run 3dmark with no crashes, but the far cry 2 bench crashed once or twice without the pc restarting.

So the only thing I could think was the Omega 600w is about 4 years old, it probably has a terrible efficiency and is not coping. I just wanted to know if you would agree or do you think I should get someone to test the GPU before I fork out for the PSU?

And also I am choosing the Corsair from the good reviews it recieved, if there is anyone that can recommend a better PSU let me know as I will be planning to upgrade to the i7 within the next few months.

Thanks guys

I love that PSU, have one myself and it's very, very popular.

See if you can lend another PSU to see if that's the problem? Also, check if that PSU can deliver the amount of amps you need on the 12V rail. Does your PSU come with PCI power connectors or did you have to use adaptors on the molex connectors?

Sounds just about right my friend...but try to serverly underclock your cpu to 1.4ghz and your gpu to bellow its 2d clocks for 3d and 2d..then benchmark it and see what happens.

Hi Tariq,

I did think about lowering the clocks, when I bench the cpu and monitor the voltages the PC runs fine and benches stable over night, it only happens when I bench the GPU.

Because it is a new card I figured I would rather not touch the clocks, but my corsair hx750w will be here 2morow morning (ps any experience with that psu), will plug that in and if it does the same then I guess the GPU needs to be returned. i hope thats not the case

The problem is probably that gfx card. Have you ever received the error message "display driver has stopped working and has recovered successfully" from windows? If so then its not an uncommon error - driver issues i suppose - that nvidia never got around to fixing>>> google "nvlddmkm error" and see if you're experiencing anything that some other poor soul has

Hi jprestonnaidoo, funny you should mention, I did have that issue happen alot with battlefield 2 and batman, but it happened as the actual game was starting. I changed back to vista, loaded the newer drivers, the games run further then before but now the pc just shuts down. the psu has a fan on the back that only used to come on after a few hours of game play, once i put the new gfx card in it was on permanantly and was getting really hot.

I think i am trying to convince myself its not the card, lmao

Will let you guys know when i get the psu

Are you playing these games online when this happens?

Does the PC just restart or BSOD?. If it BSOD google the error.

I had a similar problem when playing Call of Duty 4 sometime back. It happened after I installed SP2 on Vista x64. I updated my network card drivers and the problem stopped.

Maybe one of the lastest patches you installed on Vista x64 messed something up.

It crashes in all higher end games, the only thing that differs is when it crashes. It crashes during 3dmark vantage benchmarks as well which shouldnt be impacted by the LAN.

Thanks for your post thought

Wel if you lower clocks to lets say half of the default clocks of the gpu then you would effectively eliminate the extreme power draw.then if it doesnt reboot then you know its the psu thats crap..it wont damage or hurt your card to underclock..use ati tool or rivatuner to set the clock.i use this method when i troubleshoot peoples pcs which i have to fix etc.
Goodluck
edit-corsair makes great psus,dare i even say ALL of their psus are solid esspecially the hx series,thats their entusiast line of psus which are modular,the TX series is the non-modular versions of their entusiast line psus.

Hi Tariq, thanks for the advice, i just got home and installed MSI afterburner. I set the clocks to the minimum that the app would allow.

Core Clock - 500 (original 666)
Shader Clock - 1108 (original 1479)
Memory - 870 (original 1161)

After underclocking it I ran the furmark and it ran perfectly, reset the clock speeds to normal and ran furmark again and it crashed almost instantly.

I then underclocked again and started a furmark bench, it was running fine and during the run i reset the clock speeds to normal and it crashed immidiatly.

So by these results can I conclude that the card is running but the PSU is not keeping up?

if so it means my money was well spent, lol

Thanks for your advice

Spazmatic said:

Hi Tariq, thanks for the advice, i just got home and installed MSI afterburner. I set the clocks to the minimum that the app would allow.

Core Clock - 500 (original 666)
Shader Clock - 1108 (original 1479)
Memory - 870 (original 1161)

After underclocking it I ran the furmark and it ran perfectly, reset the clock speeds to normal and ran furmark again and it crashed almost instantly.

I then underclocked again and started a furmark bench, it was running fine and during the run i reset the clock speeds to normal and it crashed immidiatly.

So by these results can I conclude that the card is running but the PSU is not keeping up?

if so it means my money was well spent, lol

Thanks for your advice

Click to expand...

Im glad i could help you out man!
That PSU you going to be getting is a beast!

The problem is definitely the power supply. Those isonic omega ones are crap. Even a 500watt corsair will be much more stable.

You don't need the 750watt unless you plan to sli. My advice is to get the 650watt and save the extra cash.

Hey Spazmatic

Did you manage solve this problem? The same thing happened to me today

and I also just installed a GTX275.

My setup is similar to yours. Maybe the same problem?

HI Kyubi,

Just to update you guys, I got the corsair HX750W and my machine is running perfectly, I am no able to even reach a 20% stable overclock and benching for over 8 hours.

Got about 10 hours straight of Batman Arkham asylum in over the weekend. That corsair supply rocks and would recommend it to anyone willing to spend the extra $$.

Qwiksilver, I plan to upgrade to the i7 around January once the suppliers have sorted out all the problems with their boards and then yes I plan to add a second 275GTX, run that setup until nvida releases their new cards. I have also removed the single 320GB drive and put 4 x 750GB drives in a Raid 10 set, need reliability and speed so thought that would be best as you have no overhead of parity calculations but keep the speed of a strip set, all of this with the reliability of mirroring the drives. At the cost of 2 drives, lol.

Thanks for all the help.