Ok, got a brand new computer and everything seems to be fine except when playing games (only tried with wow and cs:s atm) at random intervals the game will freeze for a few seconds then the computer will black screen crash. Have to restart after that. I've already run memtest 3.2 overnight for 8 hours which picked up no errors? What do I do now?

specs: amd 64 4000+
dfi DFI LANPARTY UT RDX200 CF-DR
radeon x1800xt 512mb
corsair 2gig xms3200 400mhz cas-2
200gig sata wd

plz halp me :'(

power supply up to the job?

OCZ 600watt powerStream

600W should be enough, yeah?

good cooling?

no difference with a fan blowing into your machine?

sounds like a heat issue, open the case an turn a fan on to the video card see how that affects it.

it's in a brand new p180 with nice cable management (didn't put together by self was done at shop i bought it from). I haven't changed anything on it at all, haven't screwed around with bios or oc-ing or anything. I would've thought that would be enough cooling?

edit: argh f*** i've been doing that for 2 years with my old compy, was kind of hoping wouldn't have to do that.

last edited by taggs at 11:24:01 12/Feb/06

Make sure you have the latest BIOS revisions and drivers for all your components especially motherboard.

Try looping 3dmark05 or 06 and see if that crashes or alternatively a different game.

Check in the BIOS for the Q-Fan/smartfan setting, try disabling that so the fan just runs full speed all the time if it is enabled. If it fixes the problem then you can chalk it up to heat related issues, and either bring down the target temp for q-fan so it starts to spin faster earlier, of if it is a ratio type setting increase it up a bit.

Alternatively consider upgrading the cooler to a zalman or something.

What kind of case have you got it in, does it have plenty of airflow going through it, ie casefans?
EDIT: Ah P180 i see, from pics of the case it appears to have very decent case cooling.

last edited by rubba-chikin at 11:41:31 12/Feb/06

does vid card have a fan on it?
is it spinning?

yeah the fan's spinning spook =/

just flashed latest bios and have cranked all the fans as high as possible. I'll see if I can get it to crash now.

Ok, problem seems to be solved. I flashed the bios with the latest version. Then my CMOS gave me an error message, checksum something or other. Manually cleared CMOS, puter booted fine, everything appears to be good.