Occasional Slow downs and restarts

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rmicro1

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Dec 15, 2006
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I just finished building a new system:

CPU - Intel E6400 C2D
Mobo- Asus P5NSLI (570 NForce Chipset)
RAM - OCZ Dual Channel XTC 2048MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Gamer Memory (2 x 1024MB)
PwrSply - Antec NEO HE550
HDs - 3xSeagate 320GB SATA2 (in Raid 5) and 1 Seagate 500GB IDE
Vid - Asus X1950 Pro 256Mb
OS - Win XP Pro SP2

I endeavored to build a gaming/storage server.

What I am experiencing is about 1 out of every 3 cold boots, the system just hangs at a pre-post state...meaning no response upon power up. If I push the reset button or power it off then on, then it comes to life with no problems.

Next I'll be either playing a game or even just surfing the net and the computer will just restart it itself like someone hit the reset button. Again this happens only occasionally like once every two or three days.

And sometimes I experience just stupidly slow performance. The system will respond very slow for 2 - 3 minutes and then recover and work fine again.

I've check all my services that are running and made sure the chipset drivers are the newest. All drivers are the most current. And I upgraded to the latest BIOS as well after I started experiencing the problems.

Initially I had a Thermaltake Purepower 430W powersupply in the system. I worked great in my previous P4 system. But it seemed to run hot and I was experiencing the above symptoms. So I upgraded to the Antec HE550 High Efficiency. Runs much cooler but I still experience the problems, so it's not power supply and I'm hooked into a 650W UPS so I know the power is clean and consistent.

Heat doesn't seem to be an issue either. I have an Ultra X-Wind on the CPU; 120mm case fan sucking air in the front and blowing across the hard drives; 2 80mm exhaust fans in the rear; Asus's vid card has a good cooler on it.

I checked to make sure the seating of everything like vid card, memory, CPU, etc. is tight.

So I am open to suggestions. The only thing I haven't run is memtest86 on the RAM. Your help is appreciated.

Thanks.
 
Here's what I did last night. I did increase the voltage to the RAM from 1.8 to 1.9. But after awhile the system rebooted on me.

I popped off the case and noticed that it was very warm inside, warmer than it should be with the number of fans I have going in it. I touched the video card and it was hot.

So my theory is that the ATI 7.1 drivers weren't pushing the GPU fan fast enough and there seemed to be no way to speed it up using ATI's catalyst control panel. I uninstalled the drivers (had to use Driver Cleaner because the 7.1 drivers don't like to uninstall) and installed the Omega Drivers with ATI Tool. From there I could manually set the fan speeds to certain temps. The default speeds from 35C to 70C were a horrible 20%. I changed it so that any temp above 50C was getting blasted with 100%.

I played Kotor2 for about an hour last night with 6x AA and 8X AS. Never had a hiccup.

Hopefully that was my problem was just an over heating video card and that this was a lesson I could learn from (as long as it doesn't do it again.)

Thanks to those who offered suggestions. Help is always appreciated.
 
Just an update: Been running the past week smooth. The system has been overall very solid. It even seems to be starting up from a cold boot more reliably (guessing the board needed a burn in period) and not really encountering slowdowns anymore.

So this can be a lesson for those experiencing the occasional restarts while playing games. Check the temp of your video card. If this is too high (over 60C) it can cause serious system instability.

Thanks to those that offer suggestions on what else to check.
 
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