General PC question - turning off by itself

[billpa]

I was having problems with my pin cab pc last week. It was randomly turning off. I figured it was the cheap power supply that came with the case that I bought. Sure enough it died on me. So I ordered a 600w OCZ ModX Power Supply and installed it last night. I played a few games of VP. Everything seemed alright.

Tonight, I am showing my little cousin some games. VP plays fine but I start playing a Future Pinball game...after a few minutes, PC shuts down. I start it up, run some temp and voltage monitoring software. Mobo and proc run under 50C but it turns off again.

I am wondering if this is an overheating issue. Is the new power supply overheating or the proc or the video card.

Some specs on my system

ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz
EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB

I had not had this problem until I swapped out video cards from an ATI Radeon 4870 to the 9800gtx+. But it was a couple of weeks before after the replacement. The case is tight so maybe I just need to add some more cooling. Does anyone know where I can find some software to monitor the video cards temp?

Sorry for the rambling...just trying to pinpoint the problem.

[Dazz]

Sounds like a possible heat issue or ram compatibility with that mobo.

[SophT]

could use a little more info:

why type of shutdown? A generic windows shutdown, bluescreen/crashdump, poweroff?

What's your O.S.?

also - from what you've said it could be that you still have an ATI service (.sys) installed on your system, that FP is calling that VP isn't calling. It calls the service and the service hangs the system.

you should look in your system log, if it's not enabled, enable verbose logging and then crash it!

Either way, when you uninstall ATI drivers, the .sys file is still loaded, if you boot in safe mode you'll see it listed. you can delete it via a command prompt with



sc delete servicename (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742045%28WS.10%29.aspx)


I don't know what the ATI service is called offhand but you can look it up either in a safemode boot or through services.msc (it used to be agp440.sys)

and what DAZZ said, pull your ram and check them 1 at a time.

[Dazz]

Oi... I've never had any good luck with ATI cards. I think SophT might be on to something about possible ATI services still running. ATI drivers have always caused me headaches and is why I will NEVER purchase another ATI product ever.

[SophT]

yeah unfortunately at work 4 months ago we got 9 new machines - all of them had nVidia cards - upgrading from older ATI radeon. I use clonezilla to just clone the drives - every single one of them hung on boot and I had to get into repair mode to delete the services.... ugghh... especially when these stupid DELLS don't come with an OEM disc, so I have to go home and get my own XP disc...

/rant
//told them not to buy DELL.

[Mungeste]

could also just be a faulty m/b or cpu? you could go about trying your psu / gfx card / ram on a different machine and see if its stable on that. Process of elimination!

[SophT]

so so far we've determined it's either:

ram
video card
p/s
m/b
cpu

oh and HDD, or bill gates hates you.

hope that helps :P

P.S. if you're using win7 beta - it's past expiration and has automatic shutdowns now... just another thought...

[Section_25]

Does anyone know where I can find some software to monitor the video cards temp?

If you just want to monitor your GFX card temps you can try GPU-Z. It works great for me and is really popular with people that overclock their systems.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Best of Luck!

[Dazz]

P.S. if you're using win7 beta - it's past expiration and has automatic shutdowns now... just another thought...Not necessarily true.

It depends on what version you have... Mine doesn't expire until March of 2010. I'm running it on both my main machines and my arcade cabinet now.

[SophT]

the public beta v7000 I mean. It was good for 6mos from install.

[billpa]

could use a little more info:

why type of shutdown? A generic windows shutdown, bluescreen/crashdump, poweroff?

What's your O.S.?

also - from what you've said it could be that you still have an ATI service (.sys) installed on your system, that FP is calling that VP isn't calling. It calls the service and the service hangs the system.

you should look in your system log, if it's not enabled, enable verbose logging and then crash it!

Either way, when you uninstall ATI drivers, the .sys file is still loaded, if you boot in safe mode you'll see it listed. you can delete it via a command prompt with



sc delete servicename (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742045%28WS.10%29.aspx)


I don't know what the ATI service is called offhand but you can look it up either in a safemode boot or through services.msc (it used to be agp440.sys)

and what DAZZ said, pull your ram and check them 1 at a time.

It's a total power off. I am running nlited version of XP. Good call on the ATI .sys file. I will check that out. Where do I find my system log? I will also try pulling the RAM. If my video card would overheat, would that make my system turn off? Personally I don't think there is enough cooling on that card and the way it is mounted in the case (fan upside down and at the bottom of the case) makes me think it is not conducive to good heat dissapation. Plus future pinball seems to tax my video card more which might explain the problem. I will try what you said and get back to you.

Thanks
Bill

[espontaneo]

90% of the time this would be a heat problem - either the processor or the graphics card (although the usual effect of overheating graphics card is hang and garbled graphics rather than a shutdown) - however graphics cards run very hot these days and have huge temperature ratings - the problem is that other components on the motherboard don't - I suggest you improve the general cooling and airflow of the entire case.

I have the same problem on my main machine on a hot day, which has two 8800gtx cards they run hotter than the sun! But they are running well below rated max temperature.

Leaving the side off might help in the meantime.

On a side note I do not recommend using ATI cards on retro platforms, if you want to run old pc games - many of the older features of the Radeon cards have been discontinued for years now - alot of late 90's and early 00's pc games will have messed up graphics - ie tranparency and shadows often don't work. This is not an issue with Nvidia cards.

[Zinger19]

I had a heat problem with mine. Every time I'd try to run anything with high end graphics or anything 3d really the temp would jump up it would shut off without warning. I ended up having to get a much larger cooler for my CPU, and it fixed the problem. My graphics card already had very large cooler on it so I knew it wasn't that. Check you motherboard to see if it has an auto shut down when the temp gets too high, and see what the temp for the shut down is. If it shuts down without warning whenever your running future pinball then your CPU is probably getting too hot in the box. Run speedfan or some other type of CPU temp monitor and see how hot it gets when running it.

[billpa]

I was able to track down some info based on some reviews on my mobo on NewEgg. One line in particular


My ONLY and BIGGEST gripe with this board is that it overvolts the CPU automatically. I paired it with a 7750 and it runs at 1.36-1.38 constantly and is causing the processor to overheat. I wanted a quiet system and I have to run my fans at full speed in order to get the processor to idle at 48C. It is a known problem with the M3A78 boards and there is no manual setting for the VCore. Just Google 'M3A78 overvolt". I cannot recommend this board for this reason.

I have the same proc and mobo as stated above. Do you think this may be the reason my pc is shutting down? I am still looking to see if the mobo has some sort of shutdown process when it reaches a particular temp. I plan on pulling the proc tonight, cleaning it and adding some artic silver. I should have done this when I first got it but the proc came with heat paste applied already with the fan and sink so I was a bit lazy.

[Zinger19]

Are you running a stock cooler on your CPU bill? I have an AMD 64 X2 Dual core 6400+ and I was having the same problem you are until I changed out the cooler and applied some artic silver, and instead of idling at 50c's I'm down to around 38c. AMD's just generally run alot hotter than the intels and the stock coolers just don't cut it, and it never goes over 50c when playing high end games.

[billpa]

yea...stock cooler. I think I will just go out and buy a better cooler and apply some AS. I have never bought anything like this before...anyone have suggestions to good brands?

[espontaneo]

never, ever, ever use a stock cooler they suck - and usually really loud

simple as that.

Any motherboard will shut down if it or the cpu gets to hot, this is a good thing, it stops it from frying.

Every few months - even with the graphics card its worth taking the cooler apart and giving it a good clean out as well....

[Zinger19]

I have an ultra x-wind...but your probably wouldn't want to get one of those because 1 you are using a microboard, and 2 it's FREAKING HUGE! I'm talking like maybe 5-6 inches across. It covers up part of my ram as well.

[billpa]

well seems like I know what to do now :D Do you guys know if I can use a cooler designed for an AM2 chip for my proc that happens to be an AM2+?

[Zinger19]

Well after reading up on it before I posted I found out that you can use an AM2 fan with AM2+. I guess the plus just means advanced hyperthreading, but it's still the same socket.

[SophT]

ZALMAN (http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/main.asp)! they make the most absolute best fans on the market. I have been using them for several years now after constant frustration with other companies like thermaltake.

Zalman may be obscure - but they were one of the first companies to introduce heat pipes to CPU-sinks and other components, heck my zalman PSU has a heat pipe in it ;).

They make fanned, fanless, fanned-water, and fanless-water solutions, as well as aftermarket GPU-sinks.

and they are extremely quiet - like nothing you've never heard before :P

Seriously I sound like I own stock or something, but Their products are fantastic!

oh, and their htpc cases (http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=193) are to die for.
/touchscreen front panel :drool:

[Zinger19]

I second SophT's opinion. Zalman is definitely top of the line.