PC Crashing Randomly.

[shep1984]

Hello,

Hope you guys can offer some suggestions, i am looking for some idea's on why a machine may be crashing rather randomly.

Its a Dual Core Core Athlon machine, with 1GB RAM running WinXP Corp. When the machine crashes more often than the screen will Freeze for a few seconds and then the PC will turn off and reboot into Windows.

Windows has been reinstalled a number of times. Motherboard and CPU temps are both well within spec. I am not able to monitor the graphics card temp (card wont allow) it is an ASUS build 7600GS 512MB (PCI-E). The card does seem hot (passive cooling via Heatsync - no fan). The crash happens when the sytem is under load from playing a movie to copying files. Normal browsing ETC doesnt appear to cause an issue.

My money is either on the graphics card or the power supply being faulty, however it is difficult to prove without replacing these devices which one.

Any help or suggestions for diagnosing the issue would be fantastic.

Ta.

[cheezemonkhai]

Have you got a bigger hammer?

RAM could also be an issue.

If you have a big room fan, I would suggest taking the side of the case and running what causes the crash with the fan blowing into the machine. This will quickly rule out heat issues.

I can't say I would blame the GPU if it is just when copying files, and would be looking more towards CPU overtemp, RAM corruption etc. The PSU could be at fault, but what brand and rated power output is it?

[Fezboy]

That's what mine was doing and I just brought a new computer as mine was older

I was told it was either my power supply or main board so it was more cost effective for me to just upgrade

I hope you get it sorted (If you can get back on-line )

[ScoobyChris]

PSU would be the first thing I'd change - not too expensive to replace and is a usual point of failure

BIOS might also show voltages on the rails which might give you an indication too...

Chris

[Neo_VR]

Yes.. id say PSU is struggling, which kills the gfx card and makes it reboot.

[cheezemonkhai]

Was why I asked make/output of the PSU, but the fwe times I have seen PSU under power issues, I usually find the HDD loses power before the GFX card and the system kind of dies horribly.

[cjb]

Probably PSU or RAM.

go get http://www.memtest.org/download/1.70/memtest86+-1.70.iso.zip

, unzip it and burn a CD from the image (use 'burn image' in Nero), hten boot the PC from it.

[shep1984]

PSU is 450W so could do with something a bit better and came with the case so no name brand.

I am hinting towards this. I have checked the voltages and they are a little off, but nothing major.

The machine is my brothers, built it for him and he uses it for his business - so he is getting a bit frustrated and i am his first point of contact.

Will see what the PSU brings.

[cheezemonkhai]

Yep I'd look at a 600w+ supply from a good manufacturer.

My current favourite range is made by a company called Tagan.

[jonboyuk]

400W + is more than enough for your purpose. Get a Hyper - they are relatively cheap but good quality. I use Tagan but they cost a bit more...worth it though PS I am almost definately sure like everyone else in here that it's your PSU

[Interphase]

I recommend Enermax supplies - I only have a 350w one, but that's genuinely 350w rather than the aggregated amount claimed by many cheap no-name ones. It hasn't missed a trick in 2 years despite having a big GFX card and soundcard, 2 optical drives, 4 internal hard drives and a variety of USB devices to deal with, not to mention a notoriously hungry processor and 4 case fans. It's not so much the quoted power anyway, as how much the supply can feed to each of the rails that's often the issue.

[shep1984]

Well New grahics card (8600GT) and a new PSU (700W Arctic Power) and again the thing has crashed. I really am at a loss at the moment as i dont know where to turn next.

Any easy to prove suggestions??

[Kaiserb_uk]

Have you tried the memtest posted above (by cjb)?

Alternatively download Prime 95 and try the torture tests - they will also show up memory problems.

[simonsheil]

Id say memory, probably a faulty stick.

[Interphase]

Just out of interest - what temperatures are the power section and the processor running at? I only ask because relative to an Intel processor, the AMDs run remarkably cool. If an AMD gets up to the sort of temperature than my P4 idles at, it has serious problems

[cheezemonkhai]

I'd suspect possibly RAM (as said above) or the voltage regulator on the motherboard has gone funny.

At this point I'd probably be thinking time to replace the system if you can afford to as tracking it down gets hard.

You have a good PSU/Graphics card so that is a large part of the expense done with anyway.

[shep1984]

Well i went down the expensive route - bought all new parts to build a new machine for myself and intended on swapping parts in my brothers machine until it worked. How Scientific .

Well memory it was - at least i think it was. Replaced the RAM (upgraded him to 2GB later also) and watched films for 5 or 6 hours without a crash. So he is happy and so i am as i have a nice new machine, as follows:

Athlon AM2 6000+

2GB RAM (Should be 4 but 2 went into other machine)

320GB Sata HD

8600GT 256MB

2 x 18 Speed DVD DL RW

Cant wait to get it all up and running tonight.

Thanks for the info gents