Occasional Spontaneous Reboots

  • Thread starter Thread starter X-ray Doc
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X-ray Doc

Hello. I built my own computer using a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP
mobo, 3.0c GHz Pentium 4, 1 GB of Kingston PC3500 Dual
Channel RAM, an ATI All-in-wonder 9800 Pro, Audigy 2
soundcard, and a quality PC Power and Cooling PSU.
Windows XP Pro is installed on a RAID 0 array of two
Western Digital Raptors. Every once in a while, usually
while I'm gaming, the computer will suddenly reboot
spontaneously. I have four case fans that run full speed
in an aluminum case. I do not overclock anything. I
can't imagine that something is overheating, but the
sporadic nature of the problem occurring while gaming
makes me wonder. I had similar reboots with this
computer until finally the mobo died. I replaced the
mobo under warranty, it worked again fine, but now I'm
seeing the reboots again. Any ideas what might be
wrong? Is something overheating? Is it RAM voltage?
Please help!
 
Sounds like too much Heat or too little Power...

PC Power and Cooling is top of the line -- what is the Watt rating of your
PS? With all those fans and two Raptor HDs, you should have at least 400
Watts. If you also have a DVD drive and a CD burner, bump it up to 450
Watts

Don't forget that those Raptors generate a lot of heat -- do you have
drive-bay fans to keep them cool?
Are your case fans configured properly to move air through the case, over
the components, and out again? Fans in front should pull cool air into the
case, fans in back should pull warm air out of the case

Good luck,

steve
 
First
Make sure that you seated the processor properly.
Sometimes a PC will run for a while then reboot.

Second
Definently boot the PC to BIOS and check the PC Health.
Watch the processor heat for a few hours. If it is high,
then you may have a faulty heat sink. If the comptuer
shuts down or reboots, then you know that that is the
problme. Most drive failures won't shutdown or reboot
the PC, they will just hang the PC. A bad power supply
would definently shut the PC down though.
I would however say that there is a problem with the
processor or the processor's fan. When you're gaming,
your processor is working very hard. Obviously the
harder it works, the more heat it dissipates which would
cause the PC to shutdown as a preventive measure. Check
to see if your motherboard has monitoring software that
can be ran from Windows. If so, run a copy on your PC
and monitor your processor. If the temp is considerably
higher than what you saw when in BIOS, then that is
probably your problem.
 
The power supply is a Turbo-Cool 510 Deluxe, supposedly
510 watts average or up to 650 watts peak. You would
think that would be plenty, but my computer is maxed out
with components. What I didn't mention before, (because
I thought the power was OK) is that I also have a DVD
drive, CD-RW drive, DVD burner, floppy drive, SCSI PCI
card to control a scanner, the Platinum version of the
Audigy 2 (that comes with the front mounted drive bay
inputs), four UV cold cathodes, an LED light badge, a
Lian Li LCD temperature display and a third 7200 rpm
serial hard drive for data storage. By the way, all four
fans each have four LEDs. I know it sounds crazy, but I
was building a show computer. I think the positioning of
the fans should be fine. There are two at the bottom
front that pull air over the three hard drives, one
exhaust below the power supply and one exhaust blow
hole. My Lian Li CPU temperature probe never reads above
120 degrees Fahreinheit, but it is actually taped to the
CPU heatsink and probably doesn't give an accurate CPU
temperature.
 
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