PC Monitor Shuts Down When Playing Games

[Corrupted]

Recently in the past 3 months, I've been having some trouble while playing games. As the title suggests, after spending a few minutes playing particular games, the monitor will just suddenly shut down, displaying the message "Entering Power Save Mode." The audio will keep playing for 2-3 seconds, then also freeze up, while the computer itself stays running, so I have to manually shut down and restart the computer.

The time it takes for the monitor to shut down varies between games.
Mass Effect 1: 45-60 minutes, then shuts down 5-10 minutes after restart
Mass Effect 2: Never before until yesterday, when it shut off after 5 minutes of playing the Firewalker DLC
Team Fortress 2: 30-45 minutes
Left 4 Dead 2: 15-20 minutes
Dragon Age: Never
Dragon Age 2: Never
Crysis (haven't tested in 4 months): Never, even on max settings I could run it with 20-22 fps for hours
Crysis 2: (haven't tested in 3 months): Never, but never played for more than an hour
Witcher: Never
Witcher 2: Played for 30 minutes on medium settings, had no problems other than inconsistent fps

My PC specs:
CPU Type: QuadCore Intel Core i7 870 @2.93GHz, 2300 MHz (17 x 135)
Motherboard Name: Dell Studio XPS 8100
Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTS 240 (1024Mb)
RAM: 6.0 GB
Windows 7 Home Premium x64

I know next to nothing about computers so any help that's not overly complicated would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[overcash]

I had the same problem using a Dell XPS 8000 system with a Nvidia Geforce GTS 240 graphics card.

Had just received Crysis 2 as a Christmas gift and my PC monitor would display "Enter Power Save" mode after running the game for several minutes. Frustrated, I thought maybe if I downloaded a different game I met have better luck. I downloaded Metro 2033 and the same thing happened. I then tested a a different game which I had played with no problems in the past and got the same result.

I'd never seen this problem before and it only occurred with recent attempts to play games. All other PC activites including watching videos worked fine.

After researching and reading other posts on this problem, I decided that the likely culprit was my graphics card overheating. I downloaded the "CPUID Hardware Monitor" which allowed me to see the temps on the card. They were running about 89 degrees C when doing routine tasks and approached 105 degrees C after just a few minutes of playing the new games.

So the bottom line to all of this was I had a very dusty graphics card. I opened up my computer and both the fan on the graphics card and the fan for the CPU had a good bit of dust. I blew all of this out with canned air. I also removed the graphics card and took it apart (should divide into two parts by removing screws from the back of the card) and there was dust INSIDE the card on the heat sinks as well. I did not attempt to apply more thermal paste as there appeared to still be a decent amount there. I just blew away the dust, put the card back together, blew out the dust from the CPU fan, and the rest of the interior of the tower.

End result was the system ran much cooler (approx 25 degrees C cooler both when idle and when gaming) and I had no problem playing Crysis 2, Metro 2033, or anything else after that.

For me I think the important part was actually taking the graphics card apart. While I have no doubt simply blowing out the dust inside of my computer would have helped, I think it was important to remove the dust that had accumulated on the heat sinks inside the graphics card.

 

[andydork5]

I had the same problem using a Dell XPS 8000 system with a Nvidia Geforce GTS 240 graphics card.

Had just received Crysis 2 as a Christmas gift and my PC monitor would display "Enter Power Save" mode after running the game for several minutes. Frustrated, I thought maybe if I downloaded a different game I met have better luck. I downloaded Metro 2033 and the same thing happened. I then tested a a different game which I had played with no problems in the past and got the same result.

I'd never seen this problem before and it only occurred with recent attempts to play games. All other PC activites including watching videos worked fine.

After researching and reading other posts on this problem, I decided that the likely culprit was my graphics card overheating. I downloaded the "CPUID Hardware Monitor" which allowed me to see the temps on the card. They were running about 89 degrees C when doing routine tasks and approached 105 degrees C after just a few minutes of playing the new games.

So the bottom line to all of this was I had a very dusty graphics card. I opened up my computer and both the fan on the graphics card and the fan for the CPU had a good bit of dust. I blew all of this out with canned air. I also removed the graphics card and took it apart (should divide into two parts by removing screws from the back of the card) and there was dust INSIDE the card on the heat sinks as well. I did not attempt to apply more thermal paste as there appeared to still be a decent amount there. I just blew away the dust, put the card back together, blew out the dust from the CPU fan, and the rest of the interior of the tower.

End result was the system ran much cooler (approx 25 degrees C cooler both when idle and when gaming) and I had no problem playing Crysis 2, Metro 2033, or anything else after that.

For me I think the important part was actually taking the graphics card apart. While I have no doubt simply blowing out the dust inside of my computer would have helped, I think it was important to remove the dust that had accumulated on the heat sinks inside the graphics card.

I have the same computer and the same graphics card as you.
I also have the same problem.
I'll try using the way you used to fix the problem.
I'll tell you if it did any good. Thanks!

 

[DM186]

Yeah all of you are having high temps and anything over 80c is not good. As said above need to clean out all the dust bunnies in your GPU's and everything else.

Then use MSI afterburner to monitor your temps and set your fan to increase as the temps rise using this program. Plus you can OC your GPU's and monitor your FPS all at the same time while playing games.

Your idle temps should be areound 35c avg. and 50c to 75c avg. on load or playing your game. Here are some links to these free programs that will help you and Good luck to you all.

http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/images/Afterburner%20User%20Manual.pdf

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

My card never goes up to 60 C no matter how long I play, 7 hours +
It hardly gets to fifty, and that's playing Crysis 2 SWTOR, SC 2. Running Cinebench, 3d11, unigine heaven. Blow the dust out with a can of air and get some more case fans if you can, a heatsink for your CPU and GPU will do wonders. Hope this helps

EDIT: All my stuff runs on air at these temps. And the highest I have seen on my GPU is 55 C and the lowest 23 C, on CPU hottest 40 lowest 16. Aim for the lowest temps you can get, heat kills a computer.

 

[kojaku]

man... every dell studio i read about is having this problem... that and hard drive failures.

ill try cleaning mine and see what happens.

 

[HEXiT]

gpu temps may be fine but the vrm's may not. check em with gpu-z there listed under vddc modules...

 

[Sunius]

i'd say you should test the memory.