What should I do???

[mademouse]

I have recently just acquired a very nice (imo) pc and I am having trouble with it. I have tried to troubleshoot as much as possible and I think I have narrowed it down but need reassurance from a much more knowledgeable person than I. The system I have is;

nVidea 9800GT 512mb VC
Rosewill 550W PSU
ASUS AM2+/AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Phenom 9950 2.6GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor
Western Digital 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
2 x 2X2GB DDR2 memory sticks

The problem is;

Every time I begin playing a game (WoW, HL2, Albatross18) I will get into the game and be fine for a while but then randomly w/o warning my screen locks, maybe flickers, and goes to no signal causing me to restart my machine. Lately it has been flickering then the red phosphors on the screen go out leaving a very heavy blue/green screen before it goes to no signal. Now, I never get the BSOD and sometimes the in game sound continues as if I were still playing, sometimes it starts to chatter. If I play iTunes with a game and this happens, iTunes continues to play songs but my screen is gone.

I have been researching this a lot and have narrowed it down to it either being my PSU or my VC. I personally think its my PSU under powering my VC causing it to shut down.
My PSU specs are as follows;

+3.3v@30A - +5v@50A - +12v1@18A - +12v2@18A - -12v@1A - +5vsb@2.5A

I have been looking at a new PSU...



Newegg.com - RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-730SS 730W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Modular LED Power Supply - Power Supplies

...which I feel will work better with my VC.

Is my current PSU too weak for my VC? Should I get a more powerful PSU? I need help cause this thing is brand new and I cant use it to its full extent yet.

 

[dario03]

Personally I think its the video card (probably over heating). I ran a 8800gt (basically the same as 9800gt) with a overclocked cpu, and 3 hard drives, with a 28 amp psu.

 

[Gustave5436]

Your PSU should be fine for a 9800GT. My guess is that the video card itself is having problems.

 

[Nukem]

Sounds like the GPU to me as well. Even the "recommended" Amps are only 26 on the +12v side, so I would look into the card itself. Maybe RMA it if you can?

 

[mademouse]

Thank you for the prompt replies!
My tower came with temp monitors and I had one of the probes stuck in the cooling fins of my VC and the exhaust temp w RivaTuner running at 78% was about 40C to 43C. I know this is relatively cool for my VC because before RivaTuner it would reach about 53C before an over heating shut down. The card works with everything else I throw at it, just not games.
So even W/O the BSOD it could be a faulty VC?

 

[Nukem]

what is "everything else"? most of that isn't that graphically intense. Games are about the only thing that will cause GPU's to stress... and even that is depending on the game itself and how high the graphics displays are... I would see if you could borrow a gpu from a friend or something and go from there, if it does it after that, then try another part... the PSU might be next... but I think it's you GPU.

 

[baron5]

agreed, that is a common cause for overheating cards/unstable overclocked cards, monitor the temps, its possible that the card maybe already be overclock if you received this computer pre installed with windows. i wouldnt be your gpu, 18amps over dual rails is plenty, even for a inefficient psu.

 

[mademouse]

Thank you for the suggestions, I will take them all in to consideration. I unplugged and plugged back in my GPU, played a bit of Portal and there have been no hiccups. I am wondering if the GPU was not seated right in the MB. Hopefully thats all it was and I am glad to hear I dont have to get a new PSU.
As for the "everything else" question, the programs I was mentioning were not graphics dependent, just videos/web browsers/iTunes Visualizer those things mainly.
I can RMA it but it was a gift and that would require a lot of work to get done. I will keep stressing it to see if it acts up and if it does I will replace the GPU to see if that was the culprit after all.
Thanks again for the input!

 

[Hefemeister]

Well since you already put in a different gpu and it fixed the problem then it is definitely the problem. Have you checked if the card was ever overclocked? It the heatsink fan clogged with dust? And yeah try reseating it as you planned.

 

[veg1992]

Don't bother with a new PSU.. because Raidmax is crap.. and it sounds like you got it fixed..