Some Problems with PC

[smwScott]

A few months ago I built a PC for the first time, and for the most part it's been great. However, I've had a recurring problem when playing games. The system will lock up, usually go to a black screen, and then I will have to manually turn it off. Sometimes sound will continue on in the background, sometimes not. This has been happening recently with Crysis, but also with far less demanding games.

Recently one of my hard drives in my RAID 0 started to fail, and the problem intensified. I ghosted the data to an external drive, replaced the faulty HDD, and then ghosted it back on to the new RAID array. The problem soon returned, so thinking that it was corrupted data I reformatted the HDD. This improved the situation for a time but did not completely fix it.

The only other thing I can think of that could be causing it is high heat. At idle, my system temps hover around 35-40 C for the CPU, 45+ C for the chipset, and ~40 C for the system. I was hoping that someone could recommend a good free temperature logging program for Vista 64-bit so that I could record the temps at the time of crash. After getting my computer back on after a crash the chipset is often about 50C and the CPU is in the high 40's.

Also my drivers are fully up to date.

Are those temps abnormally high? Do you think that's what's causing the problem? I would appreciate any help you guys could offer.

My system specs are:
Pro 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
4GB RAM
8800GT 256MB
2x 150GB 7200 SATA HDD - RAID 0

 

[Asus]

Those temps are perfectly fine. Although a good dusting always helps.

Usually when the system crashes, the PC will still be displaying the image but just not responding or the PC turns off/reboots. If the monitor goes black and the sound continues in the background then it could be a GPU (maybe monitor) issue. Unless the sound is repeating. Also look into the refresh rate on your monitor and video card settings like that.

Are you using onboard RAID or a RAID card? What chipset is handling it (or motherboard model)?

 

[VirusType2]

like Asus said, if it's locking up during video then it's really got to be your video card.

you probably just need to install software to crank up the video card fan, because the scenario you described is exactly what happens when a video card stops responding (from overclocking or too high temperature.)

By default, video card drivers don't work the fan right. not sure why. My ati card wasn't set to turn up the fan until it was like 20 degrees Celsius past overheated.

I got something called AtiTool from www.guru3d.com, and they have Nvida tools as well there.

 

[smwScott]

It could very well be the video card, but most of the time the sound does skip and cut out soon after. The screen doesn't go to black every time either, occasionally it's a different color.

I'm using onboard RAID. My motherboard is a Blood-IRON P35 series. Also nothing is overclocked. The refresh rate is 60Hz, but this definitely isn't a monitor issue.

And to Virus, I already maxed out the fan speeds - mine were set the same way yours were stock. It's not locking up during video, but it has only locked up when playing games so far.

Thanks a lot guys, I believe I can rule out it being a monitor problem, but the video card could be causing issues.

 

[Asus]

My brother just fixed a very weird issue that happened to him while gaming. His screen would go black and after a 5 second pause it would sometimes reboot. Other times the display would pop back and he would still be in the game. We thought it was the video card. He even tried a more powerful power supply. Turns out it got fixed after he bought his new 22" LCD and tossed the old CRT he had before.

But I agree, I don't really think it's your monitor either.

 

[Rico]

Sounds like a video card or PSU problem.

 

[Terminator]

Sounds to me like a psu problem.