Computer freezes during gaming, please help!!

[basket687]

I am having the following problem and I need help:

My computer specifications were E7400, 2 GB DDR2, Intel G31 mainboard, 9500 GT, and a generic 300 W power supply, I did not have any problems.

Then I decided to upgrade to 9800 GT, and I changed the power supply to Cooler Master extreme power 550 W, since then I started to have random freezes during gaming, when the computer freezes it becomes unresponsive to ANY key (even CTRL ALT DEL) and I have to HARD boot the computer to work again.

The freezes are unpredictable, I found no obvious precipitating factor but they occur ONLY during gaming, they do nor occur every day.

For the temperatures: GPU temperature never exceeds 75 C under load and CPU temperature does not exceed 60 C.

Please help me identify the problem, can it be the graphics card, the power supply, something else?

Thank you for your help.

 

[daedalus685]

Is anything being overclocked? What OS are you running?

A hard crash like that could be any number of things failing. If you are in vista or seven it is probably not the GPU on its own though, as there are measures to recover a hard crash that should work at least some of the time.

 

[jsc]

Inadequate power tends to cause a reset/reboot cycle. Having said that, CoolerMaster PSU's are not known for being great PSU's. So you could be having PSU problems.

If you can, monitor the 12 volt output (yellow and black wires on a molex power connector to see what the 12 volt output is when the system locks up. If the voltage drops below 11.4 volts, you have a flaky PSU.

 

[basket687]

The graphics card is factory overclocked to 660 MHz core (up from 600 MHz), other than that everything is running at stock speeds.
I am running vista and xp (dual boot), the problem occured in both of them.
I tried to update the drivers but it did not help.

Thank you.

 

[daedalus685]

First place to look would be a defective PSU, agree.

 

[basket687]

Inadequate power tends to cause a reset/reboot cycle. Having said that, CoolerMaster PSU's are not known for being great PSU's. So you could be having PSU problems.

If you can, monitor the 12 volt output (yellow and black wires on a molex power connector to see what the 12 volt output is when the system locks up. If the voltage drops below 11.4 volts, you have a flaky PSU.

The computer does not reboot on itself, if freezes and I have to hard reboot it, can freezing problems also be caused by the PSU?

 

[daedalus685]

The computer does not reboot on itself, if freezes and I have to hard reboot it, can freezing problems also be caused by the PSU?

Yes, if a part is not getting enough power it can have all sorts of strange behavior.

 

[basket687]

So you are saying that it is unlikely to be due to a defective video card, right?

 

[daship]

Try the old GPU to rule out GPU, then suspect PSU.

 

[basket687]

Try the old GPU to rule out GPU, then suspect PSU.

The old GPU is 9500 GT and it does not draw much power and does not require 6 pin connector. If the 9500 GT worked properly, then is that enough to rule out PSU problems?

Secondly, keep in mind that the problem ONLY occurs during gaming, it NEVER occurred when doing anything else, can a defective PSU cause such a problem?

As a note I tried to connect the card to the power supply via the native 6 pin cable and via the 2 molex to 6 pin adapter, the problem occurred in both settings.

I am not trying to say that the problem is not the PSU, but that is what I am thinking about.

Thank you for help