PC Shutdowns while playing WoW.

I have had this problem before, but apparently it has returned. My computer will shutdown sometimes while I'm playing World of Warcraft. I thought using compressed air to remove dust from my CPU and GPU would work, but apparently it didn't. My CPU Core used to reached up to 91c so I re-applied some heatsink and that lowered the temperature of that dramatically. I have a Geforce GTX 260 for a graphics card and the MAX temp it can reach is 105c. My friend believes it could be a power supply issue yet my PC is about 2 years old. I just want to see what could be the problem before I decide to buy a new video card or a new power supply.

 

What type of power supply do you have?

 

The Model No. is PSAZ-CP600. My PC was made customly at CyberPowerPC.

 

With your system only being 2 years old. it may still be under warranty. I've got a 3-year on mine, but mine came from Ibuypower.
The card you have requires a min of 500W. And your card is 600W. I don't think it's the problem, but it could be. Your temps are rather high though. Have you tried turning the settings way down, I mean way down, and see what happens.

 

What type of paste are you using? Maybe try some artic silver.

 

I have actually put the settings down to low, but the video card still reaches up to 70c even with that. I'm debating on buying a new graphics card because the fan on this one is pretty noisy.

 

70C is not bad for a video card. Does this happen only during WOW, or during other games as well? If it happens during other games, consider updating/reinstalling your video driver.

 

Not trying to hijack this thread at all. Just curious as to how upgrading/reinstalling your video drivers would help??

 

It probably won't, to be honest. I want to rule things out, and the drivers are as good a place to start as any. Unexpected shut-down points to hardware, but problems only in one particular game points towards that game. So either WoW is the most demanding program OP ever runs on his system, by far, or something about how WoW runs makes the hardware go nuts and overexert itself. So driver first, to rule it out. Then reinstall WoW, then start replacing parts.

Not a perfect approach, by far. But not everyone has a system's worth of spare components laying around for troubleshooting.

 

Thank you for clearing that up for me .

 

This has actually happened when I played City of Heroes and Left 4 Dead 2 as well. So it's not just World of Warcraft. And I have uninstalled/reinstalled the drivers to my Graphics Card. That still didn't seem to solve anything. So I am thinking it's a hardware issue.

 

Regarding your video driver.. can you tell me what version video driver you have?

 

Well, as I said before I'm using a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 and the current driver is 280.26. According to their website it's the latest driver for it.

 

Reason I ask, is I was reading on there website about issues w/ 200series drivers. Gimme a min and I'll get you a link. Are you running DX11?, or DX10?

 

dx 10

 

Sorry! I meant DirectX 11!!

 

To add more info, ever since this started happening I've started to use EVGA Precision to increase the fan speed as the graphics card gets hot. I really am beginning to think its the graphics card because the system has froze on me while viewing a Youtube video a few times.

 

That's easy to verify. Borrow a graphics card, take yours out, and run on the borrowed one for a few days. If the problems stop, then you know it's your video card.

 

Alright, I just wish I had one to borrow. ::Sigh::

 

Have you looked at your event logs? If it is a driver crashing, there would be a system report. If you are using vista control panel>admin tools>event viewer or reliability and performance monitor. You'll see some red X 's. If it is a driver issue, instead of updating, roll it back. Would at least rule out drivers as the problem.

 

To be honest, It's been doing this before the latest driver was released. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers. No avail

 

I've dusted within my case of any problems, still nothing. I'm thinking about taking apart my graphics card and seeing if I can get any dust that I missed. Maybe even replace the heatsink in there. What do you guys think?:confused

 

Okay... Now I'm convinced it's my video card. When I started my PC it wouldn't even load and the fan on my PC was blowing pretty hard. I had to hit the power switch on the back of the tower to shut it off and turn it back on. When it finally did load I got a message saying that the overclocking has failed. Which is strange because I never overclocked my system in the BIOS settings. Anyone know how to solve this before I buy a new Video Card?

 

Does your motherboard have on-board video? If it does, switch to it, and see if the system runs fine now (fair warning: on-board video sucks at games). If you don't know if you have it, post your motherboard model and we'll find out for you.

 

MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO.,LTD G31TM-P21 (MS-7529) (CPU1)

Just to add something else... I tried to play Left 4 Dead 2 today and as soon as the game loaded up my PC quit on me. I checked the Event Viewer and was Kernel Power Event 41.

 

That mother board does have on-board video, at least if I found the right one. So you can try using that and if the crashing goes away, that makes your video card the bad guy. Just be aware that the integrated Intel graphics may not meet the minimum system requirements of a lot of games you want to play.

 

Alright... So to use my on-board video I just remove my video card, right?

 

You don't have to remove it, you can go into your BIOS, and there will be a thing that says (Video) PCI-E
You need to change that to (Onboard)
Removing it will work as well though

 

I couldn't find that option in my BIOS, so I just went to Device Manager and disabled it. Sadly, I couldn't load up WoW because it couldn't find a suitable display driver to test Mimsy's theory.

 

Just a suggestion.. This has happened to me when playing Battlefield 3 beta on high settings, GFX card overheated and system restart. Lowered the settings and the game worked fine and no overheat. So maybe just lower the settings in the game. Just something I thought might help.