Recently, my PC has been randomly crashing, usually while I’m playing WoW. Sometimes, the screen will just shut off and I’ll have to reboot. Other times, I will start seeing artifacts on the screen and it will just freeze. Sometimes, I will just see a bunch of weird static and I’ll have to reboot. The problems only seem to have started after I swapped out an old hard drive for a new 2TB drive. Could it be that my power supply can’t handle it? Or is my graphics card messed up?
I thought that something might be overheating, so I took the side off of the case, and I try to put a big fan beside it (it’s extremely hot in my apartment).
I’m running windows 7 64 bit, Nvidia 7 series graphics card. I don’t remember the wattage of my PSU, but it’s an Antec and it’s fairly new (1 year). Nothing super expensive, but it was mid range I believe.
I realized that my initial message may have been a bit vague, so here are some clarifications.
I have the following hardware:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 CPU
EVGA 680I SLI Mobo
EVGA Nvidia 7800GT Vid Card
8 GB RAM
5 Hard Drives Installed (~70GB Raptor for OS, other 4 drives range from 750GB to 2TB)
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Antec P180 Case (3 fans installed, one in the hard drive bay, one at the top of the case, and one at the back)
If I recall correctly, the problem only started happening after I swapped out my 320GB hard drive for a new 2TB drive. Is the power requirement for a larger drive really enough to start to tax my PSU? I believe my PSU is somewhere around the 650W range (I’ll have to double check that when I get home).
To be more specific with the problems, it seems to happen a few times a day, over the course of 3-5 hours. Most of the time, the screen will simply shut off and I’ll have to reboot. One time, I was starting to see artifacts in the graphics on the screen (things were displaying improperly in both games and in Windows). I rebooted the computer to fix it. Once, my screen just started to display this weird static and I had to reboot. Once or twice, it went straight to blue screen. These problems have always happened only when I’m gaming.
I initially thought that it was either a heat issue or a power issue like you mentioned, but maybe this additional info will help. I might just try a new power supply, but I suppose I would need something in the 800+ W range?
The amount of Watts is not really important, but the amount of Amps is. Lower quality Power Supplies usually perform worse on a higher Wattage than higher quality Power Supplies on a lower Wattage. We have a interesting post about this topic here: http://www.hardwareforums.com/power-supply-sticky-5218/
Now the hard drive could require more juice after an upgrade, especially if the rotation speed is faster (for example from a 5400 RPM to a 7200 RPM). I’d personally try the old hard drive again or try a different PSU if you have any, just for the sake of trying to reproduce it
