cooling problem?

Computer Forum Overclocking & Cooling
1

ok, my pc keeps crashing during games, usually after a couple of minutes. i have the latest drivers and i even got the graphics card i had replaced. (i had two months of no problems before all of this)

I replaced the motherboard just before all of this started happening and ive tried two different motherboards since.

So the motherboard, graphics card and its drivers are all not the problem. Which leads me to suspect that the processor could be overheating and cutting out to stop it from being damaged.

is this a possibility, since i had to take the processor out etc. maybe the thermopaste stuff is not making a good enough connection between the processor and the heatsink.

What do you think?

2

If it doesn’t crash any other time except when the cpu is stressed it probably is Intel’s protection system restarting the system.

Are you overclocking at all?

3

Doh, forgot to read all your system specs. Is it in all games your having problems or just a few. I’m thinking now it might be a problem with the 9700 if it’s just certain titles that are crashing.

4

its been on all that ive tried…but they are ones that worked with the radeon 9700 for a couple of months before all this shit started.

i am not clocking.

this only occurs during games

Right im gonna break this down in to small questions so that i dont get lost:

  1. Do processors get much hotter when playing games?
    if so then do i need to check my heatsink is in proper contact?

  2. Could this be to do with a bad power supply? it is 300W

5

Bad PSU…maybe. It could also be that it’s simply not enough. Have you picked the unit up by itself? If it was lite, it’s probably a cheaper model and has less components in it. Also, what does it say is the maximum wattage between the 3.3V and 5V rails—it should say on the PSU sticker.

The CPU will get hotter—how much depends on the CPU cooler. The stock P4 cooler is quite good, and the way they’re designed, I’m not seeing how it could really be installed improperly.

Also, if you’ve switched motherboards using different chipsets without a reinstall of Windows, that could be giving you headaches as well