Restarts while gaming..frustrated.

Hello everyone. Long time reader, first time poster. I've been building systems for a few years now, and have never seen anything like this..

So here's my problem, and I really hope someone can offer some advice for me....

I recently upgraded some hardware (processor and RAM), and everything worked great for about a week, and now I'm getting the dreaded BSOD while gaming. Outside of playing games, the system is totally stable, never giving any problems. I've run every benchmark and diagnostic test you can imagine, and they all run fine for hours on end with no errors, so this is *really* frustrating to me.

Temps are all well below tolerable specs, so that's not the problem.
RAM tests out just fine in any test I throw at it, so that's not the problem.
All drivers are current and up to date, so that's not the problem.

Now, when I'm playing a game and it goes to the BSOD, it's a totally blank BSOD (no error codes to help troubleshoot), and I can hear a sound from inside my case that sounds like a hard drive or something shutting off abruptly. So naturally, I assume there's a problem w/ my main HD, but nope.. passes the HD diagnostics w/ no problem. Soooo... the only thing left that I think it might be is my Power Supply Unit. It's a few years old now, and some of the voltage readings from Motherboard Monitor are a bit off. Tell me if these are tolerable specs..

+3.3 = Average 3.4
+5.0 = Average 5.0
+12.0 = Average 11.86
-12.0 = Average -12.40
-5.0 = Average -5.20

So what do you think, veteran PC builders? Is this a problem easily solved with a new PSU? Following are my system specs, and my current PSU is a 400w ATX12v.

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (BIOS 1008)
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
2gb Corsair RAM
Radeon X800 XT (Overclocked a bit)
2x 80gb Western Digital IDE HDs
WinXP Home w/ SP2 and all updates.

I really don't want to shell out the $150 for a better PSU until I'm certain that's the problem, ya know? ((Another little tidbit I just remembered as well, the problems seemed to start soon after I put the Thermaltake Tornado heatsink / fan combo on.. the 80mm fan is a BEAST (10,000 - 12,000rpm)and used up the last 4-pin power cable I had left in my case.. lol..)) Any advice from you pros would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.

 

Welcome to MG! I'd suspect an PSU problem but it's odd that you didn't experience the same problem when running benchmarks. However, have you tried any intensive graphical benchmarks like Futuremark? If the computer gives you a problem there, then I'd center my attention on the graphics card and PSU.

Last year, I had a rig almost identical to yours, except I had nVidia's graphics card offering at the time. I was running futuremark benchmarks over night and my PSU actually 'exploded' sending fire and sparks in all directions. It was a cheap 400W, and luckily nothing else was damaged. I went with nothing but quality after that.

 

Im gonna say u dont have a big enough PSU,what happens to you while ur gaming is that u overload.By overloading ur not getting all of power for ur system to run,like''the video card is a hog,processor,memory etc''I would say get a good 500 watt antec psu for 70 dollars smart power 2.0 it never has let me down.the only problem are if u wanna play the new next gen games and such like upgrading to dx10 in the next year.Go ahead and get a nice 650-800psu.Because i have a


500 watt psu antec the one i told u to get
2 gbs of corsair dominators xm2
7900 xfx gt x2 sli
400 gb hard drive
e6400 overclocked to 3.4 with zalman 9700


why i told u this is that my last system my last rig im saling in trade sell and buy kinda said it backwards im in a hurry haha.My psu 500 was fine with a
7800,2.5 gbs of ram,audigy sound card,3 dvd roms/2 writers,5 fans,the processer 3500 overclocked to 2.6ghz, and a 300 gb harddrive...thats alot of stuff i thought


Then crysis is coming and i dont upgrade over 1 course of a game coming but i saw alot of the new games i wann get that i think will be good.So i started to build this rig,i go to power my system up with 3 hdds and my fans wouldnt work.It happens that a 500 psu isnt enough and i was getting what u said getting restarted in games.


But if i were in ur shoes try to get a 600-700 watt it wont hurt to spend the extra 50 bucks cuz its worth it man..

 

ive been here before , and like you guys say PSU sounds very likely , my old p4 system was totaly stable till i booted UT2004 and the it crashed EVERY time, I got a new psu and all is well.

hope this helps

 

Thank you all for your swift replies. I appreciate your input.

OverCooked, yeah I've run 3DMark and PCMark in loops for a few hours, and it still won't shut down.. *shrugs* Only while *playing* games does the BSOD show up.

Well, it sounds like it'll be a good idea to just try replacing this old PSU with something w/ a bit more juice. (I don't think Alienware intended on me putting all these power hog components in.. lol) I'll just be sure it can be returned w/o problems in case it's *not* the solution.. *crosses fingers*

Thanks again everyone, and when I swap this PSU out I'll let y'all know if it worked.

 

That's a very interesting problem. It has all the signs of a failing PSU or over heating problems however it doesn't happen with graphics intensive benchmarks. When playing games, you are more likely to be accessing the hard drive than the benchmark. I know you said it passed a diagnostic but could you try maybe partitioning your second hard drive and freshly installing windows with necessary drivers and try running a game without your primary hard drive attached? One of your hard drive *could* be at fault here, even though it passed a diagnostic. I know it's a long shot but it might save you some money.

 

All the above are very good points.

Have ye tried setting your video card to defaults, instead of overclocking it?

What about driver updates on the video card?

 

I don't recall him mentioning anything about overclocking the video card, and he did say that his drivers were up to date.

 

yeah he did''i overclocked it alittle''meaning his card''

 

Well, that just flew over my head.

Yeah, try resetting video card back to stock speeds and see if that helps with anything.