FREEZING for months now, Please help.

[Episode666]

(wasn't 100% sure where to post this)

When I try to play any graphic-intensive games, my comp will completely lock up, the speakers screech and beep and yell, and I'm forced to hit the power switch.

My specs:
Abit NF7-S 2.0
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
Nvidia Geforce FX5700
512MB DDR 400
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy

See? Not too bad... I've got the juice to run the majority of the games I like to play, and run them pretty well.

I'm trying to figure out what might be causing my system to freeze all the damn time. I've been trying to figure it out for MONTHS now! The obvious choice would be heat, right?

My case has more than enough fans to keep itself cool, so I don't see why I would have heat issues. It can't be airflow, because I've done my very best to maximize airflow inside my case:

As you can see, I don't have a CD-ROM or even a Floppy drive, and my HDD is a whopping 13GB!

This is what I got when I ran SpeedFan. When this pic was taken, I was listening to music, chatting on AIM, and posting this message:

I would give you a screen of my temps while gaming, but it would freeze...

I've tried playing without the soundcard. Freezes.
I've tried playing with a different video card. Freezes.
I've tried different RAM. Freezes.
I've tried with various different HDD's. Freezes.

I've tried completely wiping Windows on several occasions, and all my drivers are 100% uo-to-date.

The other night, I set ice packs against my CPU heatsink (the kind that don't sweat, don't worry.) and it STILL FROZE!

One possibility, the fan on my motherboard doesn't work at all. It also has another dead fan port on it, but luckily I don't use that one.

Any ideas? I'm desperate here.

 

[Episode666]

Shocking development... teh case was vibrating really bad so I simply touched my finger to the CPU fan and stopped it for a moment, and when it started whirling again, no vibration.

Also, my CPU temp fropped from 58*c to 42*c!!

Very odd...

 

[Smoove910]

Sounds like a videocard driver issue to me. Have you updated your nvidia chipset and videocard drivers lately?

Try that and see.

 

[w1retap]

take off your cpu heatsink & fan, then clean it off good with a q-tip and >91% alcohol.. Then apply some AS5 (arctic silver thermal paste) very thin and even so you can still see through it. I don't have any pix of how you are supposed to apply it, but if you look around here on the forums or google, it will help you if you don't know how. Then re-apply your cpu heatsink & fan. It sounds like you could possibly be overheating the cpu due to lack of good contact. (just don't load on a bunch of thermal paste.. a dot the size of a grain of rice to a pea is enough -- spread evenly with a plastic bag wrapped over your finger, or use a razor blade.)

 

[Episode666]

Sounds like a videocard driver issue to me. Have you updated your nvidia chipset and videocard drivers lately?

Try that and see.

I mentioned that not only are my drivers 100% up-to-date, but I've tried other video cards.

 

[Smoove910]

Get a new heatsink and fan... or at least get a fan that works... To run your system knowingly having the fan not work is just asking for trouble.

What about your powersupply... your 12v line looks a little low to me at 11.6v... dunno if that's a problem...

 

[MD_Willington]

Don't forget to inspect all electrolytic caps on your video card and mainboard, Abit had a bit of a problem with their choice of capacitors... they got sued over it actually.