Background
I've had a custom build for several years now, and in the past few months the quality of performance had begun to decline.
Until May of 2013 I used 2 LCD monitors hooked up of different sizes (~19 & ~25inch) working, often running 2-3 clients of Eve Online. I would also run steam games such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2 at maximum settings with no real performance issues. Battlefield 4 was the first game I played which stretched the limits of the hardware.
When I recently moved overseas, I disassembled the system, taking with me the components carefully wrapped and the smaller of the two monitors. I reassembled it in a similar chassis, albeit with far fewer case fans. ~10 case fans in my previous chassis, with only one large exhaust fan on the top-rear of the new chassis. The PSU is also located at the bottom of the new case, compared to the top positioning in the old.
Symtoms Begin:
From May to August of this year I had very few problems while gaming, I was able to utilize my system much the same as I did before the switch. However, halfway through august I began to experience what I perceive as overheats when running 2 or more clients of Eve Online. The monitor will go black, as if the display adapter stopped responding. Following a 3-5 second delay, the computer shuts off.
When running a Valve FPS such as Left 4 Dead 2 or Team Fortress 2, I can play with stable performance by selecting a low resoultion and medium texture settings. I could run the game for hours without a single shutdown. If I crank up the resolution, I will see a shutdown within 10 minutes.
I recently started working as a technician at a PC shop, and at the advise of my superior, I gave the chassis a full dust cleanout; I'm ashamed to admit I had let quite a lot of dust build up. After the clean-out, I brought the system back home, and was able to run Left 4 Dead on full graphics once again, but this only lasted for a few days before the symtoms return. They have since persisted.
When I returned it home, I started getting CHKDSK prompts on startup. Interestingly, I get the same shutdown issue during this process. The CHKDSK will get about 5 minutes in, nearly completing, I think, and then the display will shut off. It will not, however, fully shut down the PC, but keyboard indicators like Numlocks/Caplock will blink off and not respond to their correspondinkg keys any further. I noted today that the Graphics Card was very hot to the touch after shutting it down prior to a CHKDSK fubar'ing.
My Question
I'm now trying to figure out what components could be causing this issue. The fact that the Display shuts off before the PC leads me to think it's graphics card related. I'm not exactly in the financial position to buy a brand new video-card and so I hoped to find some advice before attempting to throw money at my problems.
I would also appreciate finding out what software I should utilize to further diagnose issues.
Further Details:
Eve Online (url=http://www.eveonline.com/]www.eve-online.com[/url]) is a sci-fi MMO, certainly not as graphics intensive as an FPS but still very memory and processor intensive.
Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2 are Valve Developed First Person Shooters
System Specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3 GHz (Dual Core)
RAM: 4GB - 2x Corsair 2048 MB DDR2 PC6400
Graphics: XFX Radeon 5770 1GB DDR5
PSU: Thermaltake 500W TT-500NL1NH-1
HDD: WD Veloiraptor 74GB 10k RPM WD740HLFS
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Thankyou for your time
I've had a custom build for several years now, and in the past few months the quality of performance had begun to decline.
Until May of 2013 I used 2 LCD monitors hooked up of different sizes (~19 & ~25inch) working, often running 2-3 clients of Eve Online. I would also run steam games such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2 at maximum settings with no real performance issues. Battlefield 4 was the first game I played which stretched the limits of the hardware.
When I recently moved overseas, I disassembled the system, taking with me the components carefully wrapped and the smaller of the two monitors. I reassembled it in a similar chassis, albeit with far fewer case fans. ~10 case fans in my previous chassis, with only one large exhaust fan on the top-rear of the new chassis. The PSU is also located at the bottom of the new case, compared to the top positioning in the old.
Symtoms Begin:
From May to August of this year I had very few problems while gaming, I was able to utilize my system much the same as I did before the switch. However, halfway through august I began to experience what I perceive as overheats when running 2 or more clients of Eve Online. The monitor will go black, as if the display adapter stopped responding. Following a 3-5 second delay, the computer shuts off.
When running a Valve FPS such as Left 4 Dead 2 or Team Fortress 2, I can play with stable performance by selecting a low resoultion and medium texture settings. I could run the game for hours without a single shutdown. If I crank up the resolution, I will see a shutdown within 10 minutes.
I recently started working as a technician at a PC shop, and at the advise of my superior, I gave the chassis a full dust cleanout; I'm ashamed to admit I had let quite a lot of dust build up. After the clean-out, I brought the system back home, and was able to run Left 4 Dead on full graphics once again, but this only lasted for a few days before the symtoms return. They have since persisted.
When I returned it home, I started getting CHKDSK prompts on startup. Interestingly, I get the same shutdown issue during this process. The CHKDSK will get about 5 minutes in, nearly completing, I think, and then the display will shut off. It will not, however, fully shut down the PC, but keyboard indicators like Numlocks/Caplock will blink off and not respond to their correspondinkg keys any further. I noted today that the Graphics Card was very hot to the touch after shutting it down prior to a CHKDSK fubar'ing.
My Question
I'm now trying to figure out what components could be causing this issue. The fact that the Display shuts off before the PC leads me to think it's graphics card related. I'm not exactly in the financial position to buy a brand new video-card and so I hoped to find some advice before attempting to throw money at my problems.
I would also appreciate finding out what software I should utilize to further diagnose issues.
Further Details:
Eve Online (url=http://www.eveonline.com/]www.eve-online.com[/url]) is a sci-fi MMO, certainly not as graphics intensive as an FPS but still very memory and processor intensive.
Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2 are Valve Developed First Person Shooters
System Specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3 GHz (Dual Core)
RAM: 4GB - 2x Corsair 2048 MB DDR2 PC6400
Graphics: XFX Radeon 5770 1GB DDR5
PSU: Thermaltake 500W TT-500NL1NH-1
HDD: WD Veloiraptor 74GB 10k RPM WD740HLFS
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Thankyou for your time
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