Help diagnose crashes

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lawnboy

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Apr 17, 2006
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I've been having problems recently with random crashes. The computer will reset itself while I'm in the middle of some work, and games like Doom 3 and Oblivion crash to the desktop or cause the computer to reset itself after a few minutes of gameplay.

I'm thinking it could be the power supply. I've got an antec sl400 running a brand new mobo with athlon xp 3000, new OCZ ram, new 7600gt graphics card. There were problems before the upgrade and I was hoping one of the replaced pieces would fix it. The randomness of the failures along with the power supply as one of the only components not replaced recently leads me to believe its the problem. Any other thoughts?? Thanks in advance.
 
Does sound like it's the PSU at fault. If you have a spare one you could try using it to power your graphics card alone and leave your existing one dealing with the system/cpu.

The problem here is that it may or may not be the PSU and there's only one real way to find out for sure. However, I've seen so many people get told it's the PSU at fault only for them to go out and spend loads on a new one and have it solve nothing.

Having said that, it probably is the PSU, but make sure you're totally sure before you spend any money on a new one.
 
...could also be the cpu over heating. Are you using proper thermal paste, is it making good contact etc?
 
I have ok cooling with thermal paste and all. It is the retail heatsink, but I've checked temps and they don't get too high.so I don't think its that. I've been building computers for many years, the cooling is adequate.
 
Go to System Properties > Advanced > Startup and Recovery Settings and uncheck the box for Automatically Restart on System failure. That should prevent the system from restarting without showing a blue screen error (unless it is a PSU or mobo problem). Hopefully the blue screen error will give you some troubleshooting clues.
 
Is the warranty up on the SL400... if it is open it up and look for bloated Fuhjyyu caps on the secondary, the smaller blue ones.. I have some dead ones from a True 430... pretty common item to die in the Antec power supplies...
 
Yeah I figured PSU or mem would be the main culprits, and the memory is new so.....

I'm not sure about the warranty on the sl400. I don't keep good track of those things. When something dies early like this I just look at it as a chance to upgrade to a competitors product most of the time (I usually screw around with stuff so much that the warranty is no good anyway).
 
I bought an Enermax Liberty 500 watt power supply and replaced the hard drive with a 320 gig seagate and stability is much better now. I haven't had any problems in normal Windows apps and games will run much longer without problems now.

I have still had a couple crashes after playing Doom 3 or Elder Scrolls for extended periods which are a bit annoying...
 
A few more crashes while under no heavy load. This is pretty frustrating, pretty much every component has been replaced at this point. I haven't replaced the case...I suppose it could be some sort of grounding issue or short circuiting occurring between the motherboard and case? I guess that is the next thing that goes.

I thought it might be that the power delivery to the computer was shoddy but I hooked it up to a UPS with no improvement. I also hooked up a dell right next to it and ran it for months without restarting.

Maybe the SL400 was ok after all.
 
sounds like ram to me, run some memtest on it. Just because it's new doesn't mean it isn't bad.
 
I ran 2 hours of memtest and no errors. Games seem to make it crash fastest, but general web browsing will cause it crash every now and then.
 
I ran another couple hours of a different memtest program and still no errors. I guess next will try a cpu intensive program like prime95 or something and see if that causes problems.
 
Well I was running a cpu burn in utility and the computer wasn't crashing and I was thinking to myself that the symptoms seemeda lot like a video card that was overclocked too far or overheating. I looked inside the case, touched the north bridge heatsink.....and burnt my finger. It's one of those stupid passive heatsinks, not doin the job at all. I'll fix this issue and hopefully things will improve.
 
Nope, put a fan on the chipset and it's cooled down but the computer's still crashing :mad: :confused:
 
I replaced the antec with a 500 watt enermax already so it wasn't that.

I just played games for a couple hours with no crash. Maybe the fan helped and it just took it a little while to cool down the chipset, but I haven't played close to that long recently without it crashing.
 
Can someone recommend me a good chipset heatsink? Noise is a not a big concern but I don't want it to be as loud as an average cpu HSF for instance.
 
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