Need some diagnosis help..

[VincentSeraphim]

Howdy, I'm a long time member of the Nexus website but not so much of the community, but I was hoping that perhaps someone here is intimately knowledgeable about hardware issues and can help me diagnose a computer problem.

 

I have a desktop that has crashed twice when put under stress recently (i.e., online gaming, games w/ intensive graphics, etc.)

I just recently upgraded to the following specs:

 

MSI 890FXA-GD65 Motherboard*

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (3.4 GHz)*

8 GB of Kingston HyperX T1 DDR 1600 RAM*

MSI Geforce 460 GTX 1 GB (5 months old, owned prior to the upgrade)

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

600W Thermaltake power supply (Two months old)

3 SATA 3.0 HD drives, 160 GB, 300 GB, and 1 TB. All 7200 RPM

VIZIO 23" Full HD HDTV (A little over a year old)

1 80 mm fan in the back, 5 120 mm fans, one of those is a front blue LED 140 mm fan. (Cooler Master 690 case), and the CPU fan is stock.

 

*These components were purhcased a few days ago.

My first few days of owning this computer, I was able to run all my games and software without any incident. It ran for several hours straight on games such as Far Cry 2/Call of Duty Black Ops/etc, all on max settings.

Then I turn it on last night to play a few rounds of online Black Ops, and the monitor cuts out half way into the second match, coming back with "No Signal" on my monitor, my keyboard and mouse both dropped their connection as well,

the LEDs on my keyboard shut off and the computer would not respond to any commands from either, but the case lights/mobo LEDs, CPU Fan, GPU fan, etc. were all still on. I could not turn off the computer via the front panel switch, I had to

deactivate it from the PSU switch on the back. When I got the computer back up, I immediately checked temperatures in the BIOS before fully booting up, the CPU temperature was at 37 degrees celsius and the GPU a couple degrees less, so I know it's not a heating issue. Ran a couple of other games and after awhile I got the same issue.

 

Also, I got on today (before writing this post) and read some people had some issues with PhysX and this, and my PhysX was set to my CPU for some reason, could this be a cause of the problem by any chance? I set it back to the GPU, but have not yet tested it to see if it produces the same crash.

 

I have also heard suggestions that my 600W Power supply might not be enough for my hardware, and that I could possibly be starving my components of power and it could be causing the problem.

 

I don't think it could be the memory, it doesn't seem related to the crash, but, I suppose anything is possible at this point.

 

Does anyone know what component could be causing this issue? I was not having any of these issues the first few days of owning it, and I was definitely not having it on my older hardware (a legacy AMD Athlon 64 X2,4 GB DDR2, same Geforce 460 GTX and 600W PSU though)

 

Edit note: After monitoring the CPU temp a little more carefully under stress, it gets up to 50+ degrees C while running Black Ops singleplayer, but cools down rather quickly if i let it idle. Is it possible heat is the issue?

 

 

Any help would be massively appreciated. Thank you very much. Attached is my dxdiag if that helps anyone.

Edited May 26, 2011 by VincentSeraphim

[Xenno]

600W is fine for your PC, but PLZ update your GFX drivers , i can bet you dont use lastest...

[bben46]

Temperature drops very fast when the load is removed. It actually starts dropping as soon as you have the crash. So by the time you can actually check, it will be back to normal.

 

A power supply problem is usually seen as a sudden reboot - the +5 volts drop too low and it resets the computer. However, if the 12 volts drops it can cause problems on peripherals such as video cards.

 

Make sure your fans are all running, and in the proper directions. I have seen a new video card where the fan was installed backwards (instead of blowing it sucks :tongue:) And that the air channels are not blocked. - trash gets sucked in and can block an air channel or an entire fan.

 

Another problem is when you don't have proper air flow through the case. Typically, fans on the back of the case, including the power supply fan, are installed to blow hot air out, while fans in the front are turned to blow cool air in. You want at least as much air blowing out as in. Some air will be drawn in through any small gap in the case, as well as through things like DVD drives, USB ports and any where else there is a gap.

 

Also, 50c is nothing to worry about. 70c is the threshold where you may start having problems, but most chips can handle at least 75.

 

Check to be sure all of your cards are seated properly and all power connections are plugged all the way in. No loose screws and all internal wiring is tied out of the way so air can circulate properly.

 

Then use a benchmark program sucha s sisoft sandra or Furmark. Furmark is specifically designed to test and put a strain on video cards. while Sandra a general diagnostic and benchmark program.

 

Sisoftware Sandra (Free to try version) http://download.cnet.com/SiSoftware-Sandra/3000-2086_4-10556571.html

 

Furmark: (Free) http://majorgeeks.com/FurMark_d4183.html

[VincentSeraphim]

600W is fine for your PC, but PLZ update your GFX drivers , i can bet you dont use lastest...

 

Actually, as a matter of fact, I am running the latest non-beta drivers from nVidia, 270.61

 

If you are going to provide help, could you perhaps do so without being condescending? I did not do anything to deserve such assumptions. Thank you.

 

 

@bben That is helpful. I did notice temperature did seem to mitigate itself rather quickly during idling. Fortunately for me, the way the heatsink/fan setup is on this video card, it's easy to

see the fan position and it is indeed flowing in the right direction.

 

I have a CoolerMaster 690 case, which thankfully there are lots of articles online about setting up the airflow on it, and I have a decent set up for that. I will check all of my connections and give the benchmark software a test run, thanks for the suggestion.

Edited May 26, 2011 by VincentSeraphim