Any computer nerds here? Hard reboots

[abaris]

So I bought a premade system last year.

AMD A8-6600K APU
8 Gigs DDR 3
Win 7 64

The only thing I did was to deactivate the built in videocard and to replace it with a Geforce GTX 650 ti.

These last few weeks I have hard system reboots when either watching web videos, such as Youtube or Vimeo and in games like Mass Effect 3 where there are cinematics. It only happens when videos are playing. Not during actual gameplay and not when the computer is simply running other programs.

I browsed the web extensively for an explanation and installed Speedfan to do some monitoring. Now I noticed that CPU temperature as well as Core temperature go wild when a video is played. From an idle of 42 degrees C (CPU) and 7 degrees C (Core), temperature rises to 70 CPU and 59 Core within three minutes. So, my guess is, at longer videos it performs an emergency shutdown because temperatures actually go to high.

GPU temperature on the other hand stays constant.

That's inexplainable to me, since simply playing a video shouldn't stress the CPU as much.

[AFTT47]

The video card may use more power than the cheap PSU that the computer came with can deliver. The 12V line drops too low and the computer reboots.

[abaris]

The video card may use more power than the cheap PSU that the computer came with can deliver. The 12V line drops too low and the computer reboots.

That's on my to check list.

But I just noticed another curious thing. Playing a video on Firefox sends CPU usage up to 66 percent, the same video on IE hardly uses any CPU power. Temperatures stay well in the green.

I might just have to switch my standard browser. But that doesn't resolve the ingame issues. What goes way beyond my understanding is, that even playing battles with many effects and objects on the screen doesn't do anything. An ingame cinematic though, which is simply playing a stored bic video, may lead to reboots.

[bennyboy]

I'm not sure what CPU temps are safe for your chip, but 70 sounds very high to me.

Chip speed CAN go up really fast when playing games. When I'm playing something with high-def 3d graphics, my GFX and CPU fans sound like a freaking wind tunnel. I've had GFX crashes and system crashes when my fans have gotten clogged with lint and dust, and cleaning them out instantly solved the problem.

If you are using speed fan to control speeds, I'd just manually set your CPU fan to 100% when doing those activities. If the chip still overheats, it can mean either the thermal paste is too little or badly applied, preventing flow of heat to the fan, or that the fan is insufficient, or that the CPU is bad.

I'd recommend buying a good Zalman cpu fan. They are relatively inexpensive (relative to the CPU and motherboard costs, I mean), and will make a huge difference in the ability of the chip to stay cool.

Having a good heavy-duty PSU is also important. If you have a late-model GFX card, it will likely draw more power than a base-model PSU can handle. The PSU is one of my high-priority buys, because if that is shit, you are risking a complete meltdown of your motherboard, memory chips, and CPU. And the difference between a shit PSU and a pretty great one is maybe $40 or so if you shop around and check online reviews etc.

[abaris]

You have at least one point, benny. I didn't blow out the case in a few months. The result was a dirty fan. I spent my last milliliters of compressed air on it and speedfan shows a higher rotation already when the CPU heats up. Temperatures are still not ideal but in check. Have to buy another bottle of compressed air.

[Reforged]

You have at least one point, benny. I didn't blow out the case in a few months. The result was a dirty fan. I spent my last milliliters of compressed air on it and speedfan shows a higher rotation already when the CPU heats up. Temperatures are still not ideal but in check. Have to buy another bottle of compressed air.

How good is the air flow in your case? Even with a great deal of dust this sounds unusual.

Its been a while since I bought a premade pc so this is purely hypothetical and probably crazy but does anyone know if its possible that the software pre-installed on it could contain safeguards to prevent upgrading? It just strikes me that if I was behind the company making the thing I might be inclined to have drivers that maintain performance of the hardware installed on the system... and *only* that hardware. After all; whos going to buy my new systems if they can easily upgrade the old ones?
If that were a possibility perhaps backing up important files and reinstalling the operating system could provide a fix?

[bennyboy]

Its been a while since I bought a premade pc so this is purely hypothetical and probably crazy but does anyone know if its possible that the software pre-installed on it could contain safeguards to prevent upgrading?

I don't think he said it was an Apple product.

[SteelCurtain]

If all the issues turned up after installing an aftermarket video card, I would do three things before purchasing anything major:

1) Buy some thermal grease ($5 on Amazon or the Austrian equivalent) and re-seat your heat sink with newer (likely better quality) thermal grease.
2) Disable the onboard card in the device manager/BIOS. It could be that the CPU is still running the onboard graphics chip, and can't handle both.
3) Flash a BIOS update, if one's available. Check if there are any known issues between your MB chipset and the GPU you installed.

After that, I'd replace the PSU and the CPU fan. Both.

[bennyboy]

^ good

I'd start with the grease and the fan, if you feel your chip is performing okay. 70 isn't that much over spec, and a nice large radiator will probably do the trick.

[Minimalist]

Do you see something like this, Ab?

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-v...ic-reboot/

The dreaded Blue Screen of Death.