is it heat or what?

[ziah]

my system specs are in my sig.

i have searched quite a bit on the forums and still having a little problem. whenever i play 3d games (thats all there really is these days i think?) or 3dstudio or any real polygon mathmatical video stuff (photoshop and benchmarks run fine so im sure its 3dbased troubles) my comp hangs up (audio also hangs and plays a fast loop of the last half second of whatever was playing untill i reset the machine). i thought it was my cheesy video card (gf2 mx400) but i just replaced it with a r9000np and it still does it. needless to say my performance went up quite a bit but it still locks up after a few minutes. the ambient room temp is always around 20c and the cpu never gets hotter than 42c. i put my finger on the vid heat sink after a crash and its warm but not too bad. ram and mb are also not very warm at crashtime. i have a super generic taiwaneese 300w PS running my system and im wondering if that is the problem (or maybe my pc133 ram). im planning to get a pc power and cooling turbocool 350w in the next week or two folowed by 1gb pc3200 and a new mobo and cpu (my bi-annual pc overhaul) also im returning the r9000 and getting a 9500 and softmodding it (or a 9600xt possibly). also in the future is a fatty watercooling rig so i can finally stand to be in the same room as my comp without that loud a$$ cpu fan screaming away.

anyone have anyclue what is making this thing crap out on me? i even have the side off the case a a 18" room fan blasting into the case and it still crashes. waaaaaa! heh. any ideas would be cool.

~z

[DarkSide8416]

Your ram is definitely the weakest link in your system. I wouldn't doubt if it was at fault. New ram and motherboard definitely a must.

[squeakygeek]

You're ram is holding you back performance-wise, but should not be causing your system to crash. If it is a hardware issue, then it would be most likely the power supply, but it's also probably that it could be a software issue.

[ziah]

luckily within 2-3 months i will have all new gear but it sucks not to be able to play any games. just some additional info, i dont have random reboots. mbm shows my voltages are really whacked out.

+3.3 is at 3.18
+5 is at 4.88
+12 is at 12.27
-12 is at 11.57

i think when the computer and video really kick in, its just drawing to much power and tweaks out. it never used to do this but its become more and more frequent. ill get a ps next so i have nice clean power for my ram and mb ugrades later on. will a quality brand (pc power and cooling) 350w be good enough.

~z

[squeakygeek]

I would reccomend a Sparkle/Fortron 350 watt PSU.

[ziah]

any reason why? i was under the impression there were none better than the PCP.A.C.

~z

[syberspy9]

get an entermax 400w
never need a new one after that
but i had the same problim with C&C GENERALS couldnt fixit had to uninstall it all then re intall it all the expantions an every thing do a viris check and defrage and scan disk (both of them) then reinstall it if it dont work after that my budy had to format.

[squeakygeek]

Sparkle/Fortron has a great reputation here on the forums, puts out more power than rated for from what I hear, and are cheap when compared to most other brands.

[ziah]

ill have to look into those. the one i was goint to get is $66 so im not sure how they compare price and performance wise. thanks for the suggestions.