PC Specs: MoBo: Asus P5GD2 Deluxe CPU: Intel Pentium 4 Socket T 3.2Gh Memory: Kingston Hyper-X DDR2 1 gig dual Video: Chaintech Nvidia G-Force 6600gt PCI-Express HDD: Western Digital 120G SATA Caviar Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 CD-RW: Artec PSU: Aspire 500watt Case: Aspire X-Navigator one night my sister installed a game and started playing, it lasted about 10 minutes and my PC just crashed... after that i tried turning it on nothing...fans turn on and lights turn on for about half a second then black, nothing. i jiggled and remounted all the connections in my PC, same. i removed the CMOS battery for 30 seconds, nothing. i disconnected everything so it was just fans, CPU, MOBO, and PSU, still nothing worked... so now im thinking my PSU died...which is odd cuz i havent had it for over 2 months yet. i built my PC towards the end of november and i bought an Aspire X-Navigator case that came with the Aspire 500 watt PSU...ive heard good and bad things about these PSUs but nothing about a 2 month lifespan...personally i think i got ripped off...o well whatdo you think the problem could be? if it is the PSU im gonna go with Thermaltake or Antec... o...and im going to try my PSU on anohter rig today so i'll follow up later...
What this sounds like to me is that your PSU could have been unable to take the power needs of your comp, and your sister playing the game could have overloaded it, it's either that or heat problems have done some damage to part of your machine, but that wouldn't necessarily happen in 10 minutes, that would be a long term thing. Although, I have seen one thing where this has happened, when I was experimenting (stupidly) as to what would happen if I removed my CPU cooling fan from the processor while playing a game, my friend played Quake 3 while I removed the fan, on some of the CPUs I tried it was fine, but on some it shut down completely, crashed and wouldn't start up again, similar to what's happened with yours, it was a result of extensive heat damage to the CPU, you might want to take a look at the actual chip (and bottom of your CPU fan heatsink) to make sure there's nothing that looks damaged.
well...i bought the PSU tester and it told me it was shot so...guess who's sending in an RMA nothing overheated in my comp and i can be pretty sure about that...i check my temps constantly and if my temps get above around 38 deg C i crank my fans...never seen even the cpu get above 40 C in this case...nothing smelled spent either...plus my board would've shut down b4 my chip got spent it would be useable by now... as for not being able to handle my rig...500 watts is plenty for what im running in my specs right now... so i guess its my PSU and i need to change it...ive already got my eyes set on an Antec 430...does that sound like enough? if you have any other thing ppl want to add b4 tomorrow please do cuz im buyin a new PSU tomorrow...thanx for the help...
Wattage doesn't mean a thing. It's a rating. Amps are important, and I've seen quite a few so called 500+ watt PSU's that have no better amps than my 350W Sparkle unit. Generally, you're going to find that power supplies from Antec, Enermax, Fortron/Sparkle (same company, different brands) and Thermaltake are the best for the money. If you really have cash to burn, or money isn't a big deal, then PC Power & Cooling has the power supplies to get.
