a problem after my vga installation

[costas555]

Hello,
I bought my new Twintech Nvida GTX570 last week and even though I installed everything correctly I have a major problem going on. At first it did it in Dragon Age 2 but after a restart it did it in Crysis2 demo and Bad company 2. While I play the games the screen freeses and the sound gets into a loop, after that I can't do anything else but restart. I've checked my gpu's and cpu's temperatures and they are fine. I'm thinking that my PSU may not be able to handle it. Best case scenario, the pc needs a format for the new nvidia drivers to get installed.

Any suggestions or anything that I might have missed?

Specs:
CPU Type:QuadCore Intel Core i7 920, 2666 MHz (20 x 133)
Motherboard Name:Asus Rampage II Gene (1 PCI, 1 PCI-E x4, 2 PCI-E x16, 6 DDR3 DIMM, Audio, Dual Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
System Memory:6135 MB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
Video Adapter:NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (1280 MB)
PSU is a 650w Silverstone

 

[COLGeek]

You seem to have a pretty decent PSU. How old is it?

However, I agree that you seem to be having the classic heat/power issue with your new GPU.

 

[costas555]

The PSU came with the whole PC build 2 years ago. I'm sure it's not the heat part cause I run Crysis 2 demo full graphics setting for 2 hours straight and the temp was steady, plus the app I have monitoring the temp gives me a written report every second. So when I went back and checked the temp before the crash it was a steady 79-80 degrees. You think formatting and having a fresh Win installed wont fix my problem?

 

[COLGeek]

A clean install always makes a system run better, but won't correct for a hardware problem. It really does sound like your PSU needs to be replaced. All PSUs, even good ones, fail in time

Your GPU requires a lot from a PSU, especially when gaming (when the GPU is maxing out). If you have access to another PSU to swap for troubleshooting, I would suggest doing that.

If not, a new PSU will likely fix the issue and then you could use your current one as a backup if needed (I keep a PSU on-hand for just such issues).

Good luck!

 

[costas555]

You've been very helpful, thank you very much for the advice. I'll let you know as soon as I have news.

 

[costas555]

oh, by the way, how can I make sure that it actually is a hardware issue?

 

[COLGeek]

oh, by the way, how can I make sure that it actually is a hardware issue?

You can use a PSU tester, but most folks don't have them (a repair shop should), thus the swap recommendation. There are some software apps that can stress your system to induce a failure, but your gaming does essentially the same thing.