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Question

Determine cause of crash

Aug 23, 2013 1:49PM PDT

So here is a good one and I have had several people take a look and thus far "not solved".....

- asus P6x58D Premium
- Vengeance 24GB.
- Interl I7-930
- ATI 7850
- WD 1TB 6GBs
- Win 7 -64 Pro

- problem: when playing BF3: after about 3-5 minutes a hard reboot. (full power down)
Originally had a ATI 5750 which caused when watching Netflix that the system would reboot.
Eventview: "kernel power error" no diagnostic info.
Now with the 7850 card, which is a PCI3, it does not happen with Netflix but with BF3. (I could play BF3 for hours without problems on the ATI 5750)

Replaced: RAM, Graphics card, power supply, motherboard. All had no effect.
With the replacement of the power supply I went from a 850W to a 1000W, which caused the reboot to happen faster.... Now you say.. get an UPS.. so I did.
APC 1300 Pro 780W. Wattage when playing BF3: varies around 350-400... so no real issue for the UPS, but after 3-10 min: hard reboot.

CPU: works great. tested with Prime95/64. Temperature foes way up to close 98C. So stopped that after a short time. but system was stable.
GPU temp on the 7850 when playing BF3 for the 5 min: 60 or so.

Any ideas of where to look? I am lost.... and not a real hardware expert but starting to feel like one.

Thanks - Jerry

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Stress test
Aug 23, 2013 8:40PM PDT

I suspect that being a gamer, you've pushed it too far. While you have the making of a good PC, it is still a PC. I have always pushed cooling to be a prime factor in keeping a gaming platform, stable. The extreme conditions a gamer makes is too often on the high side, so you never give a PC a chance to goof and when it does, it goes awry. All cycles are 100% on the high side, a typical PC may have some lag or give as it were in order to recover and continue on. I would reduce ram and see how that does, you can test but test it fully in the time it needs. Further, if not already done, make sure your mtrbd. bios is at the latest release. Check you ram status to see that are all the same. I use PCWizard 2013 and they better better being model-xyz-yada at 1-2-3-4, etc., no difference. If possible assure the bios is set to best receive that ram. In some cases, increasing ram voltage(slightly, cpu also) can help if only to make the all banks overall equal. In other words it boils down to "fine tuning" the system for best results. Of course, if you mtrbd. isn't advertised as a gaming platform, you've pushed a plain jane PC beyond it limits. Even though it may not seem like it, the best area to check is video, as that is often an area that needs immediate cooling, even with monitor s/w status saying otherwise, that s/w can be off by 10%. Also, a GPU just isn't as tolerate over time to keep things happy. i don't know what is present but having water-cooled is better. GPU, must also advertise that's a better gaming setup to have.

FYI- Even gamers that have all the right parts and all, sooner or later they'll complain that it lasts only 2-3hrs. before it reboots, etc.. Over time it starts to degrade because of heat stress and overall high demands. You should check out gaming websites that have a handle on such issues. They're more keen on what's what as another help source.

tada -----Willy Happy

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re stress test
Aug 26, 2013 9:09AM PDT

Thanks Willy, I'll give the PCwiz a go. See what it can find.
I find it however weird that a ATI 5750 card has no problems with BF3 but crashes on Netflix and that an ATI 7850 crashes the other way around.

The motherboard is advertised as an extreme overclocking board (which I do not do) so I think it should not have a problem with running BF3.

reg

J.

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Is this Netlix on a web browser?
Aug 26, 2013 9:49AM PDT

If so the old Flash Hardware Acceleration is a little too well discussed. Research that.

As to the other card I find driver hell to be a good cause. We can't just swap cards without issues.
Bob