PC Locks up during gaming

This is going to be a long post because I've been getting help from various other places.

THE PROBLEM

When I am playing the following games for any amount of time the games will eventually lock up my entire PC: Unreal Tournament 3, World of Warcraft, Bioshock, and Crysis.

These games will NOT lockup my PC: Warcraft 3, HL1 Engine games, Call of Duty 4.



THE SPECS
NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT Superclocked
Intel Core 2 Quad Q600 2.40ghz
Corsair 520w PSU
Creative Soundblaster Audigy SE
4GB G-Skill RAM (tested w/ memtest86 v 1.70)
Intel BLKD975XBX2KR LGA 775 Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard
ATX Mid Tower case 2 fans
Windows XP Pro SP2



WHAT I'VE DONE SO FAR

• I have run memtest86 on the RAM and it comes out clean.
• Installed the latest sound and video drivers from the respective companies.
• Reset my BIOS to its default settings
• Set my video cards fan speed to manual and set to 100% (NOTE: This makes games lockup the PC faster!)
• Checked how much power I am suppose to have from here: http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp It said 472w. My PSU is 520w and the video card is overclocked (not sure if that adds much)
• Cried
• Cried again

Please feel free to contact me via email or AIM if you wish. I will provide any other needed information.

 

Pretty sure I've determined the issue: Not enough power.

THE TEST I DID

I removed the sound card and one harddrive from the power supply and began playing world of warcraft with the fan speed @ automatic. The game ran fine for 5-7 minutes. After this I turned up the fan speed to 80% and within a minute or so the game locked up the PC again. I'm begining to think 520w is just not enough for quad core, 8800gt overclocked, 2hds, 2cd drives, etc...

 

It's a close call, but power is the likely suspect. I have a very similar setup. 4 gigs of ram, core 2 duo 2.2 ghz, 8800 GTX, 2 HDD, 2 optical drives, sound card and 3 120mm fans. Ive got all of that on a 550w PSU. It's sufficient and I've never had crashing problems, but I'm certain I'm really pushing my luck. Sluggish fan speeds at times hints to this. However, I've never worked with a core2 quad, so I don't know how much power they use.

The 8800 GT shouldn't be any more power hungry than the 8800 GTX. And the fact that it's overclocked doesn't make a difference - the only way it would make a difference is if the I/O slot had overclocked voltages. Simply a superclocked GPU wouldn't bring that about. The fact that crashes occurred faster with the fan speed at max on the GPU does support the PSU theory.

Do you know anyone with a spare PSU that you could swap out and try for a bit?

 

Unfortunately, I don't. I was thinking of buying one off of Newegg and then RMAing it if its not the problem.

 

Is the card factory oced? or personal tweak? yes an oced video takes an extra toll on power even if voltage is the same the overall watts used is higher ergo more strain on power supply. the 8800gt uses less power then the 8800gts-gtx variants due to improved core but are still rather power hungry. I would try setting card back to default first to see if ocing card is causing the issue as for power a good antec ps or similar quality would probably do real well in that system. my specs real similar and I run great

 

The card is factory oc'd. It was caleld "EVGA 8800GT Superclocked"

 

yeah I've had a few evga's theyve all been the gt ko's Try the power supply and if you are on a budget rosewill makes a stable power supply for lower cost then antec, I use them all the time including in this machine. (550watt dual rail)cant remember whether its 38 or 40 amps on 12v rail

 

Someone told me to underclock it to 900mhz from 950mhz and so far no crashes.

 

well it may be you got a bad one? happens now and then. check evga for a bios update for the video card. here's the link http://www.evga.com/support/drivers/default.asp?switch=2

 

I'm going to do the BIOS update. Would it be better to use EVGA's most recent drivers or NVIDIA's? The most recent EVGA one was on the 13th, but the NVIDIA one was yesterday.

 

I did the BIOS update and even underclocking by 50mhz still makes it crash. Albeit it takes longer.

 

I would get a power supply and try that and if problem persists rma the card. as for drivers I always used nvidias but it cant hurt to try evga's

 

Yeah, I just want to be sure before I go buying a bigger PSU. I don't know anyone around here who has one with more watts than my current one so I can't test it out first. I'm still researching and trying a lot of other things before I buy a new PSU.

 

A lot of people are telling me its not the PSU.

Here is a video documentation I made of the crash http://youtube.com/watch?v=5QS-iiqM-cg

Seconds before it crashed the game was at 56c. I ran this program that tests your card and when I got done my card was @ 75c but didn't lock the PC at all.