Recent content by james.e.petts

I am a little unclear. I do not know for certain that I am not dreaming the whole thing, but you are not suggesting testing for that, presumably because the prospect of this eventuality is too remote. Do you really mean that there is a small but non-negligible chance that this sort of problem is...

I am not sure that I understand this reasoning: if the chance of the problem being the graphics card is negligible, why is it worth any non-negligible effort to test for this possibility?

Is one of two fairly new graphics cards in an old system realistically likely to be having problems causing instability when not under load?

Thank you for your suggestions. Do you think that there is a realistic chance of the fact of there being two graphics cards causing the system instability quite aside from temperature (since, as noted, crashes usually occur when the graphics cards are not stressed and their idle temperatures are...

That is very helpful - thank you. I live in the UK, so the prices are not directly relevant but the part suggestions are most helpful. Thank you again.

Thank you both for your replies. Firstly, as to "pancaking": I have real doubts that the crashes that I am seeing relate in any way to GPU temperature. That is because they occur mostly when the GPU is at idle. At idle, the GPUs give temperatures of ~30C. At load, one of them tends to become hot...

Thank you: that is very helpful. I will have a go at testing the graphics card issue when I have some time. As to the parts to be retained: Parts intended to be retained for the new build A number of the components are either fairly new or still good and do not need upgrading. The parts that...

Thank you for your thoughts. If I were upgrading only for performance/features, then I could definitely wait another 6 months (indeed, another 12 months), but my current computer is becoming increasingly unreliable with blue screen errors which take away a great deal of my time and make me very...

Introduction My main computer, on which I am typing this message, I first built at the end of 2010, and now needs replacing: it has become unreliable over the last year or two, with random blue screens not fixed by upgrading the PSU to a high-end 1.2kW unit and with no errors showing on...