BleepingComputer.com: pc shuts off randomly while gaming

hello people ,
i got this awkward problem with my pc , ill give you the specs first
amd athlon x2 4400+ , asus m2npv-vm motherboard , nvidia 9600gt 512mb , 550watt psu , 2gb ram . running windows xp pro sp3
okay , so my pc seems to run fine in windows itself , even in hard applications , but sometimes when im in games (any game really> grid , team fortress 2, left 4 dead 2) it just shuts off after 15 mins as if the power supply was disconnected . mind you at other times i can run the same game for hours withouth any problems .
any ideas ?

thanks

Could be an overheating problem with your psu.

What You Could Do is To Give This A try

in Windows under the My Computer/properties page click the advanced tab and then click the startup and recovery settings button. Under system failure uncheck automatically restart. This will cause an exception error report and memory dump rather than a reboot but it will tell you if it's software/driver related or not.

Also You Could Try This, Go Into Bios
in section "PC Health" you will find option for temperature warning. this makes your pc shuts down instead of giving you a warning. Raise the warning temp or Disable this option.

well tbh a psu overheat seems reasonable as i opened my case to feel anything hot in particular the psu did feel very warm
would that be normal or ?

okay so i unticked the automatic reboot function and the problem still occurs
what does that tell me ? :s

It may be telling you that overheating is the situation, since overheating of a system...generates no error message of any sort, at any time.

If your system continues to reboot and displays no BSOD/error message...that would be my guess (but I'm certainly no expert).

Louis

I would bet overheating of the video processor or the system CPU itself (or both)

Hamluis is right - if either of those overheat, you may not get any kind of message, no BSOD, etc. Let it sit for a while and you will be running again - for a while. My BIOS has a setting that if my CPU gets about X degrees, it just shuts down (hopefully). Hopefully it will shut itself off before it cooks itself.

You can download some free software to monitor temperatures of such things, see what the max temp is for your video and CPU and keep an eye on it while you are gaming. It will most likely go up and you can watch it.

I have no recommendations or personal favorites. Speedfan is one, but there are others that are probably more exciting:

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

I have seen where especially gaming will run up these temps and you can sometimes just upgrade your cooling fans to get more airflow or even go liquid cooled (Prestone ?). Systems can be designed and modified with gaming in mind. Maybe your system was designed with general purpose in mind if it works okay until the games begin.

Games can be intense and demanding of resources these days.

well it has ran games for about 2 years till the error started happening , and it was put toghether just for games back then , altho some of my setup is a bit out of date now , also , i use everest to monitor temperatures and it doesnt seem to give any really high values. highest ive seen is about 50° (celcius) on the graphix processor

Dust generates heat. Blow out the whole computer especially heatsinks.

I've had this problem before, researched it, and fixed it. Before your processor even gets to the temperature to melt, the electrical impulses will stop firing and the system will reboot. My system made a loud noise when doing so as well. Since games hog the most resources, playing them also generates the most heat.

supaone, on Nov 19 2009, 09:55 AM, said:

Sorry but could it be that your partner or parents put a kind of game lock on it.
Works OK for Game addicts that have to spent some time being social with their partner or others. ;)
Sometimes you have a free time and sometimes yes about max 15 minutes hihi.

Is somewhat off topic but fun must be ;)

Memory that's to hot or corrupt could do this to just replaced some here and no more reboots. ( should have give errors in log or blue screens but no)
Have a few problem pc's here from some people , the gamer one i tried to test/keep as long as possible better for his girlfriend she promised to give me a kiss for that ;)

uh no theres no lock on it its my own computer

Getting back to the subject; it does sound like a over heating problem. Try some of these. Make sure the inside of your tower is clean. No critter hair, fan blades are clean,ect. Leave the side of you case off and put a big fan blowing into your case, watch EVEREST and see how long you can play. If things play longer and better you know its a over heating problem. Now what is over heating?? Power supply would be my number one choice. You can buy a small fan that you can mount where you want to and to blow where you want to, about $20.00 at Best Buy or other places. I also use a Infrared red dot thermometer to check temps of fan blades, heat sinks on every thing,ram which never gets hot. It can help you find the hot spot. Right now the side of my P.S. is 22.9 c and the out blowing fan center of the P.S. is 29.6. This will help on figuring what is getting hot. Any program that I have used will all indicate different but the little red dot don't know how to lie. I use this system to see if things I do to the air cooling in my system helps or hurts. I added a small video card cooler and lowered my card temps 10 deg. c for about $20.00. I know this sounds to simple and it will take a little time but it works for me.