Random restarts playing various games

Hey everyone,

I have been gaming a while on this PC and have found that it just restarts with some games. The restarts are not consistent in any form really. The most recent ones have occured with dawn of war II: chaos rising, I played the game for 4 hours the first night and nothing happened. The next day I got to this particular stage and restarts every time. I have also had restarts occur with left 4 dead 2 (after over an hour of play) and once with battlefield bad company 2 (after a very long time of play).

I suspect something is overheating (or thinks it is) but do not know how to test for it. It does not occur with all game, only seem. It seems to be random what games those are. My computer also has alot of fans so I find it hard to believe it is actually overheating (they all work, I checked).

My setup is:
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 x2 crossfired
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 mobo
Corsair Dominator 3 x 2GB DDR3 1600 memory
core i7 2.666ghz
850 w corsair psu

any ideas, or tests I could do would be great. I am clueless about what to do.

 

Just did it again, a windows error message was on screen briefly before the game crashed.

 

Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger
Date: 6/24/2010 10:34:54 PM
Event ID: 18
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: LOCAL SERVICE
Computer: Shane-PC
Description:
A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: Cache Hierarchy Error
Processor ID: 0

The details view of this entry contains further information.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger" Guid="{C26C4F3C-3F66-4E99-8F8A-39405CFED220}" />
<EventID>18</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>

This error seems to occur very closely to the time of the crash.
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-06-25T02:34:54.056640600Z" />
<EventRecordID>53603</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID="{1D95298D-73F5-42F4-B3D8-F57F52C962CB}" />
<Execution ProcessID="1464" ThreadID="1980" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Shane-PC</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-19" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="ErrorSource">3</Data>
<Data Name="ApicId">0</Data>
<Data Name="MCABank">6</Data>
<Data Name="MciStat">0xee0000000100014a</Data>
<Data Name="MciAddr">0xffee3c40</Data>
<Data Name="MciMisc">0x212d</Data>
<Data Name="ErrorType">9</Data>
<Data Name="TransactionType">2</Data>
<Data Name="Participation">256</Data>
<Data Name="RequestType">4</Data>
<Data Name="MemorIO">256</Data>
<Data Name="MemHierarchyLvl">2</Data>
<Data Name="Timeout">256</Data>
<Data Name="OperationType">256</Data>
<Data Name="Channel">256</Data>
<Data Name="Length">928</Data>
<Data Name="RawData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ata>
</EventData>
</Event>

 

Ok first off...

http://majorgeeks.com/Speccy_d6358.html

Download and install, this will give you temps of your hardware including video card and cpu.

It is possible as you say, something is overheating, most likely video card or CPU, I'm actually leaning toward CPU in this situation but thats an educated guess.
To get a good idea of temps you want to boot your PC, let it idle for 5 minutes and note the temps, then fire up a game and play for 5 minutes then minimize and note temps again, do this a couple more time in 5-10 minute intervals.
This should tell you if you have heat issues.

On another note, Left For Dead does have a tendency to randomly crash for some people, not sure about the other 2.

It would also be an idea to check your hardware for dust build up and clean as needed.

It might also be worth downloading and running this....

http://majorgeeks.com/MemTest_d350.html

Just to make sure you don't have any RAM issues.

I would try all of the above first, post your findings and we'll go from there.

 

I ran the memory test. No errors, so that is good. I am going to play some games in a minute, but one thing I did notice immediately on running the temp check is one video card is running 20 degrees hotter than the other. Just normally. Is this a normal occurrence? I imagine it is the card that doesn't have much space for the fan.

 

I cleaned out the dust (one video card was pretty caked up).

Temperature Tests:
Normal:
GPU 1: 45
GPU 2: 40
CPU: 40

5 minutes in DOW:
GPU1: 48
GPU2: 65
CPU 51

10 Minutes
GPU 48
GPU 65
CPU 48

 

That is not normal. You're going to want to take a closer look at that card. Since you have cleaned out the dust, check that the fan moves freely and that it spins up when the temperature goes up.

Heat rises. The top card will be a bit hotter in a cross-fire or SLI configuration, but it shouldn't be by that much.

 

I don't suppose there is an easy way to tell which card is which in the tests. It ran much better since I cleaned it out but I was still a little concerned that the hotter card during gaming was the cooler card outside of gaming. That didn't really make much sense. The good news is, since cleaning the dust Dawn of War doesn't seem to crash. The hotter videocard never got above 68, and the cooler one never above 50.

I did play with the fan and it does seem like the really dusty fan turns harder than the cleaner one. I imagine that eventually I will be looking at a new video card soon (probably cards). I guess now I know to clean my computer more often. Ill keep this thread posted if anything randomly restarts again.

 

It is tedious and very time consuming, but you can clean the blades and center piece of the fan with rubbing alcohol and q-tips, if you're concerned. Alcohol for cleaning computer parts is typically around 90% or so (do not drink it!!!! :eek).

68C is a bit higher than I personally like, but at the same time it's not high enough that the card is in danger. I would say you're good for now, but obviously it's a good idea to keep monitoring the card temperatures, especially the hotter one.

 

i may uncrossfire them and see how they perform individually. thanks for the tips, I thought that big of a difference was alarming.

 

That big of a difference is a bit of a bad sign, yes. At the same time, the hotter one is down to a manageable and non-lethal temperature since you cleaned it out, and if you can keep it from getting above 70 you've bought yourself a nice window to look for upgrades

 

Glad you got it sorted out

The 4850 does run fairly warm anyway, my son has one, I've also read they run pretty hot when cross fired, something you may want to think about is switching them round so the heat isn't always concentrated on one card. As Mimsy said, heat rises so maybe once in a while, every month or 2, just switch them up to help extend the life of both, although theoretically it lengthens one's life and shortens the other. Cross firing is a bit of a double edge sword in that respect. Just an idea.
Just glad you got it up and running, hope it doesn't give you any more problems.

@mimsy... q tips and surgical spirit, why did I never think of that rather than my mini paint brush lol

 

Well, what I personally use is a thin eye shadow brush, but I didn't think it was very likely that a guy would have one of those.