9800 Pro causing random shutdowns?

[gnarly]

Hi all,

I've recently installed a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro (128mb) in my machine (its an Athlon XP1800+, Syntax SV266A mobo, 1gb ram, other bits and bobs, Q-Tec 400w PSU). I've got the latest catalyst drivers for the 9800 installed, I'm running XP SP2 and I'm as Windows Updated as I can be. There's a thermaltake switchable-speed CPU fan installed and I've got it cranked up to high-speed.

The issue I'm having is that during a heated game of Battlefield 1942 or Desert Combat the machine will just switch off, normally about 45 minutes in. I then have to disconnect and then reconnect the power cord and leave it for a minute or so before it'll come back to life.

I don't know if other games cause it because I don't have any except Unreal Tournament, and that doesn't push the hardware quite as hard.

Nothing is getting particularly hot as far as I can tell. The "shut down if things get too hot" type functions in the bios are disabled. There's no obvious warnings or errors in the system event log. I could have a look through the ACEEventLog but I don't have a clue what to look for really.

So does anybody have a clue what might be causing this? Is it likely to be a dodgy PSU?

Cheers,


Olly.

Edit - BTW, tried to update the BIOS to the latest version just in case, but the update software doesn't support Windows XP. Great.

[csimon]

have you tried memtest86?

[gnarly]

I haven't, yet. I'll seek it out and give it a go.

Cheers! :)

[csimon]

give us a report when you're done! :thumbsup:

[gnarly]

give us a report when you're done! :thumbsup:
It didn't find any problems at all. Any other suggestions?

[TheBaron]

its entirely possible that your GPU is overheating. do you have VPU Recover on?
give us some voltage readings though, lets rule your psu out of the equation

[csimon]

also how healthy are your psu reading?

[gnarly]

Sorry, I'm new to this sort of thing so I apologise for the stupid questions :-)

I do have VPU Recover switched on - and I've told it to prepare an error log in the event of a problem. Where would it put that? Administrative Tools > Event Viewer > ACEEventLog? And what would I be looking for?

How would I find out how healthy my PSU readings are? Is there software to do this or am I looking at a multimeter job?

[csimon]

yes there is ...you can try downloading motherboard monitor from here http://www.short-media.com/download.php?d=154.

[gnarly]

Well it would appear that it was the PSU. I swapped it for an identical one in another machine and all is well in the world once more. Go figure.

Thanks for all your help guys :-)

[csimon]

sorry to hear about the psu but glad you got your issure resolved! :thumbsup:

[ryko]

FYI, Q-tec psu's are really bad pieces of junk. That 400w is probably more like 250w. The identical replacement might work for a while, but don't expect it to last long. I would get a quality psu like an Antec, OCZ, Enermax, Fortron Source, etc...something around 400w from one of these good manufacturers will be plenty of power for you.

It is best not to skimp on the psu. :)

[gnarly]

Awww, but they're gold and spangly ;-)

Cheers for the advice. I'll bear it in mind - can't upgrade for a while now though, nice new monitor, nice graphics card, nice snowboarding holiday, nice new rear shock for my bike... awaiting the next nice pay-cheque now ;-)

[ryko]

how long did the first one last???

[gnarly]

I don't know to be honest - I got the PC secondhand. I think the new graphics card pushed it over the edge somewhat though - I only had an ATi 3D Rage Pro in there before ;)

I had some problems before with a second hard drive a while back - at the time I thought it was some dodgy cables, but this whole incident makes me think otherwise...