Unregular hard crashes while gaming!

[Kwintus5]

I play WoW and GTA4. In both games I have at unregular moments a crash. My screen freezes, the sound goes (90% of the cases) in a loop and after a while my cursor freezes to. Only option to get out of this is trough a hard reset. :( (ctrl-alt-del or alt+f4 doesn't work)

I updated my Nvidia drivers already to the latest and did memtest86 (wich didn't found any errors). I also did a quick virus scan with Avast and a quick search with Ad-aware. Still not solved.

The wierd thing about it is, that it happens very unregular. I played almost whole day on WoW and suddenly I get a crash. Now I might restart it and after 5 minutes it can crash. Same for GTA4... you can play for houres before it crashes or you just enter the game and it crashes... very odd...

Help? :( I don't like to reset my pc at least once a day... :'(

[Tumbleweed36]

Please list all specs including video card, power supply brand name and watts. That should help us to know what a load is being requested from your rig.

[Kwintus5]

Can't you click the little arrow under my name? My whole rig is there. :)

But I list it here for you:

-Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard
-Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 CPU
-2x TakeMS 1GB DDR2 667Mhz RAM
-Geforce 8800GTX 768MB graphicscard
-Zalman 550W ZM460B-APS powersupply
-2x Maxtor 320GB STM3320620AS in RAID (speedmodus)
-Creative Soundblaster X-Fi eXtreme Music soundcard
-LG DVD Multirecorder RW+R

[Tumbleweed36]

Sorry, did not see that, most don't do that for us, so will look closer next time.

Go to the bios and see what the temps and voltages are and report them back here.

[Kwintus5]

Do you think it's the temperature? Because it would amaze me that WoW would generate enough heat to crash my pc? And it sometimes happens right after I start a game. :) (so no time to overheat)

But ok, I will check them tommorow and report back here. ^^ Thx for helping so far. :D

[Kwintus5]

When my pc just started:

CPU: 41 °C Motherboard: 24°C
VCORE: 1.312V, 3.3V: 3.248V, 5V: 4.017V, 12V: 12.196V

[Tumbleweed36]

Looks O.K. in the bios. Download and run SensorviewPro and see what it gives at-rest (just started up) for voltages and temperatures. Then, play one of those stressful games and check that temp again with SensorviewPro. That might give us an idea how hot you are getting under-stress.

[Kwintus5]

I just installed it and at this moment it's like this: (pc running for an hour or 2)

CPU: 65-67 °C
System: 55-56 °C (What temp. is this?)
Aux?: 46 °C ("")

Voltages:
VCORE: 1.31V
3.3V: 3.25V
12V: 12.10V

[DaveTibbetts]

Temperatures are quite high.
Spray your fans with a can of compressed air.
Dust can slow the fans RPM and cause it to not work efficiently.
If you can try do this around every month.

[Kwintus5]

=O
Ok, will do that :D (I got my can of compressed air always close ^^)

[DaveTibbetts]

If not, you just generally have a bad circulation of air around your tower.
Or a different problem with your system.
But thats what i'm guessing.
With temps like that i wouldn't wan't to be playing for hours.

[Tumbleweed36]

You need to change that thermal paste and put Artic Silver in there. That CPU is way too hot when under stress. It should not stay over 60c for long periods of time and it will shut down when it gets too hot. Also, you run the risk of damaging other computer components if you keep running it that way.

You need a fan in back pulling hot air out of the case, a fan in front pulling in cool air and that paste cleaned off and reapplied. That should take care of your problem:

:
Applying Artic Silver Thermal Paste

[Kwintus5]

Lal, chinese :P
I have an intake and an outtake? ^^

BTW! How is it possible that my game crashes when I just start it up? Does the CPU overheat that quickly? oO

I would expect it to crash after some time then...

[Kwintus5]

Is it normal that my temperature-meter jumps? (5°C lower sudenly, then higher...)

[DaveTibbetts]

Ok, it might not be anything to do with your temps, but your temps are still very high. You still need to get them sorted out.

Whats the RPM of the fans?

[Kwintus5]

CPU Fan is 2000 now (I just stopped playing WoW) and it goes to 1103 right afeter ^^
CPU Fan 2 is at 734 :P

*EDIT*

When I look in my graph I see the temps were close to 90 °C when playing wow :O (CPU) so about 85-90C

[Tumbleweed36]

Those temps will shut it down to keep it from burning up. Yes, they can spike in just a fraction of a second. If you keep using it while the temps are this high, you risk doing damage to other components. I recommend you redo the thermal paste NOW!

[Mcninjaguy]

ok so GTA 4 is a very porrly ported game to the PC even with GTX 260 i can only play on low medium settings with no lag, you will have to keep eveything on the lowest settings prett much with your 8800 video card


I hope you get the tempature problem sorted out

[Kwintus5]

Why is it suddenly getting so hot? I didn't had problems before when I was playing WoW... oO

[koala]

Are your case fans positioned correctly? Front fan low down pulling cool air in, rear fan high up blowing warm air out, with an unobstructed airflow path in the middle.

The CPU heats up VERY quickly. Check out youtube for videos of CPUs without fans/paste catching fire after just a few seconds.

Replace the thermal paste with Arctic Silver (much better than all other generic pastes), make sure the heatsink and fan are firmly locked in position, then post back with....

1. temperaures and voltages from BIOS
2. temperatures and voltages from SensorsView at startup
3. temperatures and voltages from SensorsView during (not after) fullscreen gameplay