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Problem description: For the past 3 years I've been using my old gaming PC as my living room media center mostly for watching movies. Recently I've had the desire to play some local co-op games on it. I updated the video card drivers & installed steam, but starting most games leads to a hard reboot of the entire PC. Some specifics: There is no blue screen or error message-- the computer simply hard resets. Directly before this occurs there is a noise like the video card fans whirling up to high gear, but only for a fraction of a second before the computer reboots. When it does reboot- the computer treats it like a crash, as in the Windows boot screen comes up with options for a normal boot vs. safe mode. This is not a consistent issue-- about 20% of the time I can get a game to run and play just fine, although since I've been testing I've never let any game run for more than 2-3 minutes. When it does crash for each game, it crashes at the same spot-- usually right after the splash screen as the main menu would boot. Pertinent Negatives: - The computer has worked just fine on every other task. It's been used multiple times a week to watch movies for the past 3 years. - Monitoring the video card's temperature before it crashes it's never going above 70C. It idles at around 40, and when the games start it seems to go into the 55-65 range. - Using steam's streaming service to play games work's just fine. I can stream any game using my main PC and play it on the media server without it crashign. Recent changes: - I uninstalled my old AMD drivers and installed new ones. Originally I did the most up to date ones, but they made most games crash instantly, which made me realize I should probably use the Crimson Legacy Drivers since I have a Radeon HD 6950. One I did the Crimson Legacy Drivers, games booted just fine. - I installed Steam System Specs Operating system: Windows 7 64-bit. Processor: Intel Core i7-@ 4Ghz (Dont' remember which exact model, but it was one of the early versions. Pre-Sandy) Video Card: Radeon HD 6950 Twin Frozer Edition Motherboard: Don't Remember at this point. Likely ASUS or MSI. Ram: 12 gigs PSU: 550 Watt (Don't remember the company) HDD: 1 Samsung Solid State Drive 80gigs, 3 large regular HDs either WD or Seagate All BIOS settings are running at either default/auto or underclocked speeds. What I think is going on: To me this seems like a power supply issue. I'm guessing the 550W isn't enough for the video card, so when it tries to kick into gear for the games, the lack of power forces the computer tor reboot. This would also explain why streaming the games from my other PC works just fine. I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything or see if you guys have any other insight before I go ahead, and drop 100 bucks on a new power supply. My second suspicion would be the graphics card overheating, but that seems unlikely given I can monitor the temperature, and it hasn't gone over 70C. One thing that is strange to me-- why can I play games 20% of the time? If it's a PSU issue, shouldn't it be 100% consistent? How does it suddenly have enough power 20% of the time?
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Jul 2, 2016 21:13
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 12:38 |
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Four initial things to try before switching the PSU: -Check CPU temperature using http://www.hwinfo.com/download.php -Check HD health using the portable zip edition of CDI: http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html -Make sure you're on the latest motherboard BIOS. -Use onboard video temporarily if possible. Megasabin posted:What I think is going on: To me this seems like a power supply issue. That definitely could be the issue. If it's a PSU issue you could be right on the edge of having enough power and also when a PSU begins to fail it may only work sporadically and unreliably like that. Kind of like a flickering light bulb.
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Jul 2, 2016 23:30
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