| Re: Intermittent shutdowns/restarts whilst gaming [message #478903 is a reply to message #478239] |
Thu, 24 January 2013 19:40  |
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Veyrdite
Messages: 1471
Registered: August 2006
Location: Australia, Sydney
Karma:
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General (1 Star) |
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RAM & CPU
Your OS may be panicking & triggering a power reset. The simplest thing you can do is re-seat your memory (ie take it out and put it back in again) but this won't fix chip faults.
If you try running your computer with one stick at a time you may be able to pinpoint the issue to a faulty DIMM, and hopefully get a refund for the faulty product (if it's newish). I'm assuming you are using two 4GB sticks at the moment.
Have you OC'ed your CPU, changed RAM timings, etc?
Power Supply
This smells more like a PSU going flaky than anything else. Is it a generic or branded unit, what is its name/model and approximately how old is it?
Power supplies generally lose efficiency as they heat up, so after several hours of use/gaming yours might believe the load upon it is too high and decide to reset.
How you treat the wattage figure printed as your power supply's specs depends on how much you believe the manufacturer. Generic PSUs commonly give up at half their rated figure ( and contain regulator chips not designed to provide as much current as they advertise ) whilst more expensive units don't add up the total wattages of all their output rails (5v, 12v, etc ) but instead just advertise the 12v figure as the unit's wattage ( which is the only rail capacity that matters to most people ).
Overheating
Overheating any monitored component (graphics card, CPU, some harddrives and some PSUs ) will cause a reset. Have a feel around inside the unit while running a game or immediately after browsing the web & downloading files - is your harddrive too hot to touch, and/or are your CPU/g-card fans going crazy?
If you cannot identify any particular item overheating easily, put your case on your desk, take the cover off and run it with a desk fan pointed at it. Keep the fan a good distance away however, as they output as much EM as they do everything else ( which can cause errors when computer components are not completely shielded by a metal case connected to earth ).
If I'm using obscure terminology or you want more help, feel free to ask.
Regards, William
WOL: Veyrdite Previously: Dthdealer ( a long time ago )
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