A long and sad tale.

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craig46

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Four weeks ago I bought myself a new rig. Not a great one but not bad. I had some probs to start with but I figured, since it was a cheapie, I'll just start upgrading. So far I have replaced EVERYTHING except the CPU! Suffice to say that it is still freezing up in games (HL2, Doom3,MOH Pacific Assault, Deus Ex 2, to name but a few.) so it is not games related, must be hardware related.

OK here's the skinny, with what I have now (see below) I have all the latest drivers including firmware for my CD/DVD combo. Flashed the latest mobo drivers. Reduced both the sound and graphics acceleration (as recommended on a cupla game forums)
I'm just at a loss as to what the prob is. Could it be the power supply? I don't know shit about that, so maybe some good hearted expert on these forums could help me out?

System Specs:
Motherboard Asus A7N8X-VM/400
OS Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP1
Graphics Card ATI RADEON 9600 XT AGP 128mb
RAM 512 DDR
Sound Card C-Media CMI8738/C3DX Audio Device PCI
Hard Drive 80 GIG Maxtor
DVD LITE-ON COMBO SOHC-5232K
Direct X 9.0b
 
Sounds like your system is overheating. Make sure you have dx 9.0c installed, make sure you have the latest catylst drives (5.3 i think). Look at the cpu temp in the bios, if it's reading above 45-50 idle then you should work on making it cooler. Make sure all your fans are spinning. Also could be bad ram, do you have ram to swap out with what is in there? Try running sisoft sandra 2005 benchmarks to push your system, to see where you make it crap out at. Disable all unused onboard devices. What kind of cpu is it? Make sure its seated correctly. Swapping out the power supply wont hurt either. If it still continues i'd have to blame on mb or proc. Asus quality control is pretty much non-exsistant anymore, over the past 2 months they've gone to absolute crap.. If you're running intel, the whole 875p chipset is about to be phased out, so make sure that you get a board not using that chipset.
 
Power supply is a good possibility. What are the specs on it and who makes it. (The specs are on the power supply itself somewhere.) That graphics card is pretty anemic, too. It may just be getting blown out of the water, but I would guess it's something else. Have you tried playing the games without sound to see if the sound card is the problem? (You have to go into the game and shut off the audio. Not all games let you do this.) Is your sound onboard the motherboard or a separate card? I ask because I had one particular motherboard that didn't get along with SoundBlaster Live sound cards. I had lots of lockups from that.
 
Antec's probably my favorite. I've had good luck with Enermax, too. I've got an old Heroichi (HEC) 300W that looks like it will run forever (as long as I don't need more that 300W).

I just had another thought. How is the power in general in your home? Do you have this PC plugged into an UPS? At least a good surge protector? If you are running the P/S near its limits, any power fluctuation might cause life to go to heck.
 
ccording to my Asusprobe the CPU is running at 53 degrees
CPU is AMD Athelon XP 2600+
siSoft sandra reckons my motherboard temp is too high, so how do I lower it?

PSU Specs:
It's a Maxpower ATX 12v Model PL350
Amp output as follows.
+8V = 40A
+3V = 20A
+12V = 15A
-12V = 0.8A
-5V = 0.5A
+5V = 3.0A
Maximum Power = 350W
 
Ouch, I'm guessing that's your problem there, it is recommended that you have ATLEAST - 24A on your +12V rail, 15 is quite low but considering it is a 350W still, if I where you I would upgrade your PSU and also your SP1 to SP2 ;).
 
And yes your processer is running hot i would advise getting a new CPU Fan, but it's not running that hot it's going to blow up or anything - your not in any rush for a new CPU Fan btw is that temp when your computer is idle or playing games?, but your crashing I would say is caused by your low quality PSU if it's not caused by the PSU I would still upgrade the PSU as basicly it's not that good.
 
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