A little advice please and an unsolved mystery

[phlashman]

I'm not a rookie by any means when it comes to these things but I had an incident happen the other day that I would love top hear some advice or speculation about. To begin with here's the specs on my machine.

2.80 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Hyper-threaded (2 total)

Board: Intel Corporation D915GUX AAC63985-203
Serial Number: CGUX43601828
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: Intel Corp. EV91510A.86A.0431.2005.0324.1533 03/24/2005

2 Kingston 1Ghz DDR2 PC 4200

ATI Radeon HD3650 video card

I was playing the Sims 3 and had a major system crash...lost video and nothing seemed to bring it back. I eventually unplugged everything from the mobo and reset the bios...low and behold it came back up. I gradually replaced everything, and for the moment at least, everything seems to be OK. I did up the RAM to 3 Ghz a few days prior but everything seemed to run fine. (I've since gone back to 2 GHz), All that being said, its still a mystery as to exactly what happened and why. I know this is not the mercedes of motherboards, but its served me well up to this point...like I said any input or speculation would be greatly appreciated guys...thanks in advance.

 

[Shylock]

certainly could be a ram issue. Sims 3 is not the most demanding game in the world, but it does use what it can. wow so many factors. there isn't anything typical that I know of specifically, but goofy RAM can do pretty much anything. I'd just keep a eye on it, and try to duplicate the problem maybe.

 

[phlashman]

Thanks for the input shylock, I can't for the life of me figure this one out. Mobo crossed my mind first, but now since everything seems to be running ok I'm not so sure...yea I know bad RAM can do goofy stuff...but you'd think Kingston RAM would be pretty stable, then again, just like everything else, you can get something bad no matter what ya pay for it...Hmmmm, wonder if flashing the bios might resolve this.

 

[Hefemeister]

I would test the ram with memtest to confirm or eliminate it as a problem.
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

 

[phlashman]

Thanks guys...but I may have found the culprit. I've tried to be diligent about keeping my pc clean inside. I've always kept the side off and have a small fan blowing into it to help cooling (especially playing games). Although I've blown out my power supply with canned air, I thought it would be diligent to take the top off and blow it out this time. Low and behold, looked like a pile of cats had made a nest in there. (We have pets)...Cleaned it out extra good, making sure I inspected the caps before putting it back together...so far, all is well. Thanks very much for the input...BTW, Hefemeister, RAM checked out OK and thanks for the link.