New rig freezing after 5-10 minutes of gameplay

Hi all, i registered at this forum today, hopeing that you might shed some light on this problem I'm having with my new rig.

The specs are:
mobo: Asus p5n-t deluxe
CPU: Intel Q6600 2.4 ghz
Graphics card: Asus 8800 GTS 512 mb (pci-e 2.0)
RAM: (2) Corsair TWIN2X 2x 1GB DDR2 800MHz = 4gb ram
OS: WinXP sp2
PSU: 850W
HDD: SATA HDD 320 gb

I've installed the newest drivers for the motherboard and the graphics card.

The problem is that it freezes 5-10 minutes into gameplay of Crysis (I also tried to play NWN 2 but no change there), I took it to the place where i bought the parts to see if they could help me, they said the memory settings in the BIOS were wrong but changing them to (5-6-6-18, thats what they suggested) didnt solve the problem. They also suggested that i should put the trc timing to 25.

I'm a bit new to memory timings and dont know too much about them and any help is appreciated.

Thanks

 

Hi,

I don't have too much to offer, but have you checked the temperatures? Your power supply seems strong enough to not struggle but the freeze-ups after 5-10 minutes of gaming seems like a heat related problem.

 

Heating is the first thing that ocurred to my mind also, but since you've brought your stuff around to pros I'm not sure if that's an issue. I had almost the exact same problem as you some while back, in fact it may have been exactly the same, anyways, the point is that the game would freeze and then play really, really jerky after a few minutes of play. I simply dusted off my graphics card with a can of aerisol and the sys was back to normal. So if its heating and your computer is old, then dust is what I'd check out. However, if its heating and your pc is new, then I would check out your cooling devices, particularly for your graphics card. Maybe look up on newegg and see if anyone has had problems with heating with your card before.

 

Thanks for the reply, heating was actually the first thing i checked and the temperatures seem normal, all fans are also runing as they should. I've even tried downclocking the card to see if it would help but it still freezes after the same amount of time. Seting the fans to max speed doesnt help either, just makes the computer sound like an airplane.

 

You might try running a really old game and seeing if your card can run that. If it still freezes up it would seem that the problem is not with performance, instead, I would guess considering your memory timing issue, the problem is with compatibility. You might double check all your components for compatibility and you might also set your system to the "optimal default" setting or whatever that's called in the bios. That would seem to be the easiest way to ensure everything is timed right.

 

what temps did you check, and what do you consider normal? I would really check into a heating issue...use hwmonitor to monitor your temps, esp gpu, while you are playing. I have an evga 8800gt, and evga says the temps should be below 70 degrees. I had to up the fan speed (stock wouldn't do it) cause my temps were getting to 80 degrees and causing freeze ups/crashes in games.

 

Today i finally solved the problem by updateing my bios drivers to the newest 1001 version and it hasnt crashed yet, thanks all for the help