Computer shuts down during graphically intense games.

[kdawg150]

I've done quite a bit of reading already on this but none of the solutions I've found seem to fit my situation. I can run older games like Knights of the Old Republic just fine, but more graphically intense games like Battlefield Bad Company 2 or Assassin's Creed 2 will result in my computer shutting down.
Then when I try to restart sometimes it restarts successfully other times it freezes or starts up and gives me a BSOD right after startup.
Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 3.00 GHZ
4 gigs ddr3 ram
Geforce 460GTX 1g gddr5
Raidmax RX-730ss PCU 730 Watts.

As far as I know 730 watts should be plenty of power and I've been keeping track of my temps with speedfan and they're all normal. The computer is only about a month old and it was working fine up until now. It's clean and free of any dust buildup. What else could it be?
Thanks in advance.

 

[fss]

As far as I know 730 watts should be plenty of power...

Just to clarify, do you think 730W is plenty of power, or do you know 730W is plenty of power? Honestly it sounds like a heat issue to me. Are you monitoring the temperature on the CPU and the graphics card?

 

[kdawg150]

Just to clarify, do you think 730W is plenty of power, or do you know 730W is plenty of power? Honestly it sounds like a heat issue to me. Are you monitoring the temperature on the CPU and the graphics card?

I think, hah, how would I test it to be sure?

And yes I'm keeping track of the temps with speedfan and they're all normal.

 

[kdawg150]

Oh, and this last time with Battlefield Bad Company 2 I was only able to play the game for about 3-4 minutes before shutting down, which makes me think it's not a heat issue with it happening that fast?

 

[quirmche]

Is computer off the shelf or custom built?
Two months old, Right?

A failing power supply may be causing your symptoms. Time to return it!

 

[MysticDude]

I've read in a computer book that problems like these are either heating issues or power supply issues. Make sure that everything is plugged in well and your heat sink is working well too.

 

[mugaliens]

My laptop was doing the same thing from time to time while using my external monitor. At first I thought my monitor was going bad, but I tried it with a friend's machine, and it had zero problems reading the same and higher resolutions, so I concluding the graphics chip on my laptop was simply no longer able to keep pace at its highest advertised resolution.

Since I removed my monitor and am back to using just my laptop and its built-in monitor, I haven't had the slightest problem.

 

[fedaykin]

Are you getting a BSOD? If so, make sure your drivers and games are up to date. Every now and then, graphics card drivers get released that screw up.

If not, try different power supply and graphics card. Sometimes the temp sensors on those chips is a little too far from the actual die, so the gpu and mem controller may be actually be hotter than you think.

Every powerful GPU I've ever has needed careful watching, as only a little dust

 

[Borek]

As others said, either temperature going up or power supply.

I had to replace my power supply about a month ago, after seeing similar behavior.

 

[Eyelegal]

730W with his gear is definitely enough, and the wattage of a psu generally isn't the problem these days. I run a Phenom 2 955 @ 4ghz with a modestly overclocked Reference ATI 5850 on a 4 year old 500W Enermax Liberty.
Most people would wonder how this works at only 500W (and 4 years old), but its just because that particular psu provides highly efficient power at high amps across the 12V rails. These days its about quality, not wattage. Raidmax doesn't have the greatest reputation for quality, at least not when I last checked. There is a system of standards in place to help guide buyers, if it has the 80+ bronze, silver or gold symbol, you can be fairly well assured its good quality. If the temps look fine its probably this, then again, what temps are you monitoring?

There are a lot of temps that come into play when gaming. Keep an eye on motherboard temps, if your northbridge bus is getting too hot no information will pass through it and your pc will crash much the same way you describe.

The 400 series nvidia cards are also known for being ovens. Make sure you are watching the temperature sensors not only on the cards core, but for its memory, shader and voltage regulators (vrm).
On my ATI card, and the 5000 series is pretty cool, i can get my vrm temps up to 120c and beyond with a program like furmark. On that note, do not use furmark, its very unrealistic and not very useful as a real world tool.

However the crashes you describe remind me of ones i had with a terribad power supply back when i was a kid and couldn't afford fancy things, so i would go in that direction first.

 

[magnetboy]

Here are the possibilities and the solutions to your problem(yes, some of them were said above.)
A: You bought or built a computer with an out of date Video Card.
B: You didn't install your video card driver, so the computer is referring to an onboard driver. That would make your computer crash for sure!
C: you built the computer yourself and forgot to put in a heatsink, so everything is melting.
D: You don't have enough RAM available for the game to work. You may have enough ram on your computer, but you may not have enough FREE when running your battlefield game. Shutdown unneeded processes and applications. WARNING: Only shutdown processes if you understand what each one does and the consequences of shutting down the wrong process like explorer.exe which some people confuse with iexplorer.exe. There is a huge difference
E: You have a single core processor which isn't fast enough to run your game.
F: You have an intermittent power supply.
G: You have or had magnets near your computer.
H: A wormhole formed inside of your computer and sucked your video card into another time period.
I: Battlefield doesn't work with your video card. This is a rare issue now a days, but it can still happen.
I hope this was helpful; well excluding H. LOL.

 

[dwaring28720]

AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 3.00 GHZ
4 gigs ddr3 ram
Geforce 460GTX 1g gddr5
Raidmax RX-730ss PCU 730 Watts.

i know a few people have mensioned the graphics drivers and game updates but I've had similar experiences with certain games where by it crashes and/or laggs.

It might sound strange but download the lastest version of your sound card drivers, and if it still persists disable your sound card in the device manager and try it, for some reason games seem to take a dislike to some sound cards, I've never had a problem with for example WorldOfWarcraft until i bought a new board with an onboard VIA soundcard and the game crashes or laggs terribly, however when i disable the soundcard it works perfectly, same went for CallOfDuty 2 and Crysis although they were sorted with updated drivers where as WoW just didnt and carried on lagging.

 

[CJaxx]

Hello, I have a question. What could be wrong if my computer reboots itself a few seconds into a game. I recently upgraded from an on board video card to a Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 and the 350 watt power supply to a 500 watt. The installation was smooth and everything seems to run fine, but when I start a game, such as Dawn of War 2: Retribution or Warhammer Online, the computer reboots into safe mode. I should note that the games were working fine before the GeForce and I have already tried going through this walk through - http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=169555&hl= . I've looked through more forums nthan I care to admit and this is the closest thread to my problem I have found.

This what have:
AMD Phenom II X4 830 Processor 2.80 Ghz
8 GB
Win 7 64 bit Home Premium
500 w PSU
Galaxy GeForce GTX 460

Thanks for any help.

 

[Hurkyl]

Have you tried the forums for the games you're having trouble with?

For a handful of games I've played in the past, the fanbase had figured out that while the particular game didn't work with the very latest drivers for the kind of video card I had, it would work fine if I got drivers that were a few versions old.



Are there other (graphics intensive) games your new video card works well for, or are those the only two you play?

 

[CJaxx]

Have you tried the forums for the games you're having trouble with?

For a handful of games I've played in the past, the fanbase had figured out that while the particular game didn't work with the very latest drivers for the kind of video card I had, it would work fine if I got drivers that were a few versions old.



Are there other (graphics intensive) games your new video card works well for, or are those the only two you play?

Hello, thanks for the response. Yes I have looked over several game forums and they seem to point to either drivers or PSU. I will try to use some older drivers and see if that solves the issue. The problem is spread over all the games I play that require high resolutions, such as Borderlands, Oblivion, all the Dawn of War II's, and Warhammer Online. Most recently a friend tried to update the performance index for the computer and the same behavior persists. I am currently trying to communicate with the manufacturer to see if they can shed any light. Honestly, I'm about to take the dang thing out and drop-kick it into the next consumer review as a pariah of the gaming community.

 

[JaredJames]

Hello, thanks for the response. Yes I have looked over several game forums and they seem to point to either drivers or PSU. I will try to use some older drivers and see if that solves the issue. The problem is spread over all the games I play that require high resolutions, such as Borderlands, Oblivion, all the Dawn of War II's, and Warhammer Online. Most recently a friend tried to update the performance index for the computer and the same behavior persists. I am currently trying to communicate with the manufacturer to see if they can shed any light. Honestly, I'm about to take the dang thing out and drop-kick it into the next consumer review as a pariah of the gaming community.

If it's randomly shutting down when graphics become intense it's either PSU or over heating.

1. Check the PSU is capable of handling the GPU plus other peripherals.
2. When it shuts down, boot straight to the bios and check the temperatures.

If you're getting the problem during the performance tests (Windows 7 System Rating), it really doesn't sound like a driver problem.

Don't attack the card until you know it's not your fault *cough* PSU *cough*.

 

[FtlIsAwesome]

H: A wormhole formed inside of your computer and sucked your video card into another time period.

In that case contact some scientists and they'll give you big $$$ for the breakthrough in physics and then you'll be able to buy a hundred supercomputers.

 

[JhonMoney]

there is some problem with your power supply.

 

[LordLiverpool]

I had this problem, but the CPU and GPU temperatures seemed reasonable. I'd recently changed the motherboard, so I wondered if there was a bad connection somewhere. Turns out that one of the "arms" that holds the CPU cooler in place wasn't 100% pressed down, so the CPU must have been operating at too high a temperature when gaming (though the temps didn't seem extreme to me).