computer locking up...need assistance

I recently purchased and pieced together a new gaming pc mostly for World of Warcraft and Halflife 2 gameplay but I haven't had a chance to enjoy them to their entirety because my computer locks up when I play them and I have to reboot each time.

The lock ups occur completely at random, happening anywhere between 3 minutes to 35+ minutes of game play and beyond. When the pc freezes, the screen color is random <sometimes it's purple, other times it's blue....green, etc> and the last sound wave that plays gets stuck in a skipping pattern . Completely unable to do anything, I have to reboot. I'm back up and playing within 15 seconds or so but the consistent freeze and reboot is a royal pain in the *** and shouldn't be happening as far as I know.

Here are my specs:

Power Supply -> Ultra X3 ULT40064 1000-Watt Power Supply - ATX, SATA-Ready, PCI-E Ready, Energy Efficient, Modular

Case -> Thermaltake VH8000BWS Armor+ MX ATX Mid-Tower Case - 230mm Fan

Disk Drive -> Lite-ON IHAS220-08 SuperAllwrite SATA 20x DVD Burner with Lightscribe OEM - 20x DVD±R Burn, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD±R DL, 12x DVD-RAM, 48x32x CD-R/RW, Black

Hard Drive -> Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB Hard Drive ST31500341AS - 7200RPM, 32MB Cache, SATA-3G

Memory Sticks -> Corsair XMS3 Tri Channel 3GB PC10666 DDR3 Memory - 1333MHz, 3072MB (3 x 1024MB)

Video Card -> XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition Video Card - 896MB DDR3, PCI Express 2.0 x16, SLI Ready, (dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, VGA Support, FREE Far Cry 2 Game

Monitor -> Samsung 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 5ms, 1000:1 Static Contrast Ratio, 8000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio, 1440 x 900 , DVI, Black

Mother Board -> Intel DX58SO Socket LGA1366 Motherboard CPU Bundle - Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core, 2.66GHz, 8MB L3 Cache, Hyperthreading, Processor

I don't believe the motherboard has a sound card so I am using Realtek to cover that. I've been told it could be my power supply or my video card

Any ideas or solutions you could offer would be GREATLY appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

 

I have the superclocked version of that card. Nice. Start simple. Download RivaTuner, http://majorgeeks.com/download737.html Now, use the config to max out your GPU fan to 100%.

(Click on the RivaTuner icon in the toolbar, go to customize-low level system settings and then max out the fan.)

 

It's still crashing on me even with the RivaTuner settings you recommended. Any other ideas or thoughts?? I'm at a loss here.

 

Hi Ya

No expert on this one but try checking your IRQ for the Audio and Video these two can both use IRQ 5 along with several other devices, it maybe the IRQ is getting a bit choked up... I had this awhile back and it was sharing my tv tuner my audio and my video and several other things about five in total... performance was shocking but seemingly on paper everything appeared normal... got no warnings but surely noted the performance hit found the irq issue via the device manager..thought the psu was under powered at first...

Your mobo doesnt have the bulging capacitor issue?? from years ago if an older board...Like I say no expert on this one it may also be a driver conflict - two drivers trying to access the same memory reference at the same time and looping or crashing itself...have you checked your error logs? ITs also possible to frag part of the memory on your Graphics card I've seen an old Geforce 4 Ti 4200 at the desktop and just a series of yellow lines evenly spaced across every screen...

G.luck with this one...

 

I would check for overheating issues (probably video card) so make sure you have some good airflow around it. but if you turned the fan to 100% and had no luck its probably something else.Of course you can always troubleshoot by going back to the basics all onboard specs and one stick of RAM and swap components in and out, untill you find the bad egg.

and as always check your drivers and BIOS to make sure there up to date

hope this helps, Cheers

 

Thank you everyone for your help....It turned out to be the power supply so I replaced it with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009 and now everything is running great

 

Out of interest ... was the PSU faulty or was it that it was multiple rail and you had too many things on the one rail???

Also, surprised you didn't buy a better monitor with that rig?

I bought mine with the rig I just built off E-bay 3 yrs warranty, Samsung 2233SW 1920x1080 full HD, 2.3ms response time 15000:1 contrast, 23" Wscreen, and it looks freakin awesome!!

$260 AUD

 

the psu was faulty.

My monitor fits my needs...I looked at others but this was the best fit for me right now

 

Fair enough :major