Not sure if this is a software or hardware problem

[Computer Acolyte]

My computer occasionally freeze and restart during games. It happened pretty often during Icewind Dale 2, maybe once in Doom 3, and every 4 hours or so of Half Life 2. Now I'm pretty positive that it's not overheating, considering I have a personal use oriented fan directed at the entire motherboard (the GPU fan is rattling when speeding, so I'm doing this until I replace it), and the computer is petty new, it was formatted, has new hardware and latest drivers.

It's an AMD Athlon 3200+ with 1GB of DDR400 RAM, a 7600GS GeForce, and a Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF mother board. I'm running Windows XP.

[Mada_Milty]

Problems such as this usually indicate overheating, as you have mentioned. I would still check the temperatures to confirm. They're usually in BIOS. The other thing this could be would be power. How many watts does your PSU output? You have to make sure that it provides enough for when your system is under load.

Also, it is good practice to keep your drivers (particularly video!) up-to-date.

[Computer Acolyte]

Well like I said, with the size of the fan I'm using on the computer it's definetly not overheating. As for power, the house does have a weak electric system, but what's weird is that Icewind Dale, which was crashing often, did not crash before the format and new hardware, and the power managing unit hasn't been changed. It's the same CPU too, the only things I upgraded were motherboard, RAM and GPU.

[Plaphon]

did it show you any blue screens? i agree with Mada_Milty the PSU can cause this often reboots. and you didn't answer how much watts does you PSU output. May be it's too weak that it can't hold all your devices.

[Computer Acolyte]

It says 230V. There're no blue screens, just a freeze, then a restart.
If it's a PSU problem, then that doesn't explain why Icewind Dale 2 crashes so often and the much more demanding Half Life 2 and Doom 3 don't. Surely it doesn't require much of the system, not to mention that with the previous hardware (and same PSU) it didn't crash at all.

[Plaphon]

that's the thing, 230w now days is very poor PSU, for your system you'll need at least 300w. if it's possible try to run your system with other one.

[Orbital57]

Plaphon is correct. 230 W is a very weak Power Supply these days and if it's a cheap unbranded version then it may not even achieve that very smoothly. Have a look at a power supply calculator and see what they reccomend for your system. A quick google search gave me these -

http://journeysystems.com/power_supply_calculator.php

http://www.distortionwave.com/Power.html (2nd thoughs, this looks way out of date...)

Anyone know any better PSU calculators?

[Computer Acolyte]

OK I calculated it and yeah, looks like I need a new PSU. They didn't have my GPU listed for some reason, but 300W sounds just about right.
I'll try it sometime during this month and we'll see.