Time to get something more powerful?

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lethial

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 22, 2005
Messages
149
Hey guys:

It has been over a year now since I built the system in my sig. Since then, I have changed the gfx card to a 7800GTX 512MB, added a BenQ DVD-DL burner, and 1 (soon to be 2) seagate 7200.10 400GB HDD.
The system has been running 100% stable at 2.65GHz. But lately I am getting random restarts and BSODs...

Suspecting that my RAM may be bad, I have tested the system again with memtest, and they all pass for >20 hours... The crash seem to happen whenever I run something that is HDD intensive in the background (ie. uTorrent). If I try to run a game while using uTorrent I can almost guarantee a sudden system reboot, or BSOD. (I get the PAGED IN NONPAGED MEM BSOD if I was using firfox while using uTorrent...)

So did my addition of component overpower my powerstream 520W? I have tried various versions of forceware, both MS IDE controller and nVidia ones. I never installed the NAM drivers since they are known to cause problems, and I have always disabled any system devices that I don't need. (I use the NVidia raid controlled sata ports)

Up until couple weeks ago, my system was perfectly fine, I was running games while browsing w/ no problem... Though I rarely used to run uTorrent in the background... But I recall that when I did, I did not have this much issue... (Though I have always had the cold boot problem where I will need to warm boot right after I cold boot or else my system just won't come up, sometimes it does though...)

So is my PSU showing its age? Or do I have some bigger problems? ( I have a APC BackUPS 1250 dedicated to the system too...)

thanks
 
A 520W PSU is more than adequate for your setup if it is indeed a good PSU. Measure the voltages if you have access to a multimeter (you can buy one, and even the cheap ones are good enough for measuring PSUs).
 
Do you get any restarts while just running a game? no uTorrent?
 
Thanks for the reply. I have measured the voltages and amperage of the PSU before and the PSU behaved like a champ. I haven't measured the PSU since the weirdness happened.

Honestly, I have been scared (yes scared) to game much :( I have alread lost my whole system because of the random restarts, which hosed my HDD completely... sigh...
 
Your going to have to test it your system underload from a game, with no uTorrent.
 
dBTelos said:
Your going to have to test it your system underload from a game, with no uTorrent.
Click to expand...

Yeah the crashes and reboots definitely happen when I use Utorrent....

Edit: in fact, any HDD intensive operation will kill the system... Things like virus scan...
 
lethial said:
Yeah the crashes and reboots definitely happen when I use Utorrent....
Click to expand...

You still don't get it. I said do the tests with OUT uTorrent running.
 
dBTelos said:
You still don't get it. I said do the tests with OUT uTorrent running.
Click to expand...

That is what I did, I was able to play latest games for hours w/o having it running. Programs that access the HDD more often seems to be the cause of the reboots.
 
lethial said:
That is what I did, I was able to play latest games for hours w/o having it running. Programs that access the HDD more often seems to be the cause of the reboots.
Click to expand...

Doubt it is a PSU issue then. Although it could be the 3.3V or 5V rails failing. Test them with a DMM.
 
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