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A Little Help?

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Mattman

Member
Joined
Mar 23, 2003
Location
WI, USA
:confused:

Over the last few months my comp will freeze up after playing games for any length of time (at least 30 min). I have been trying to troubleshoot the problem to no avail.

So far I have removed all overclocking, removed my Audigy, reinstalled WinXP with all of the latest drivers, DX9c, etc. My temps are fine, never breaking into the 50's even with o/cing.

Is my vid card dying from all of the o/cing (it's been o/ced since I got it a couple years ago)? Should I be looking at something else? Any help would be much appreciated.
 
The fan on the Vcard seems to be turning normally, and there's no dust on the heatsink. There's also 2 empty PCI slots so there's plenty of airflow.

This also happens when the side covers is off the case. The ambient temperature around the computer is about 65*F.

I was planning on buying a new Vcard anyway, but I wanted to hold off until I solved this issue.
 
have you removed the heatsink and reapplied thermal paste? maybe the old stuff is just dried up, and not giving you good contact between the HS and GPU.
 
Okay, that didn't work. I removed the heatsink and old thermal paste, cleaned everything up and replaced it with some AS3. Still quit after 4 runs of 3d2001. Guess I'm going for a new video card, probably a 6800GT.
 
what did you have it oc'd to before? maybe you just ran it with the stock cooling and thermal pad for way too long at OC'd speeds and it damaged the gpu?
 
That's kind of what I was thinking. My o/c is in my signature, and it had been like that since I got the card (first Xmas after the 9700 came out), and I think stock is 290/265.

If I decide to o/c this 6800GT (and that's why we're here, right?), I'll either put on that Arctic Cooling aftermarket setup or this could be my excuse to try liquid cooling.

Thanks for the help guys & gals, it's much appreciated!
 
Just a quick follow up...

I ended up replacing most of the components in computer because of this - turns out it was the mobo. All of the parts that I removed are happily chugging along in other computers (except said mobo). I ended up with a pretty nice system, but boy troubleshooting is a PITA! If this problem was a car I would have scrapped it.

Anyway, thanks again for all the help!
 
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