Stalling issue...

[NightshadowUK]

I've just made a system for someone but having given it to him he's now reporting a stalling issues. All is apparently well for the first few minutes of use but then everything freezes, the monitor goes into standby and then the PC resets itself.

HELP!!

[0iD]

I'd look at the power supply &/or ram first. Is it showing a blue screen first?

[NightshadowUK]

There's apparently no blue screen and we've replaced the power supply previously for a faulty connection so RAM it may well be.

We'll head on over to Scan tonight to get some of Corsair's finest (replace the Scan's major brand stuff).

Thanks for the help, I'll post back when we're any wiser.

[0iD]

Good Luck

[d3fiant]

run memtest a few times to see if memory is at fault before just buying replacement, could be temps of cpu, nb, vga, mosfets etc. Also run pc with the bare minmum of components to see if it runs without problems, could also be a driver conflict, poorly seated addin card. There are a huge number of possible causes.

[NightshadowUK]

Many thanks for the help d3fiant, I would have run Memtest but I only got to read your post after returning from the guy's house.

We replaced the RAM and this seemed to stop the reset problem (for some reason...) leaving us time to 'Ctrl, Alt + Del' bash etc. when it froze... a few times we managed to get things back but most of the time we had to manually reset. We did come across an ATi error while playing games so we're now thinking GFX card. It'll run a game perfectly for about 5 minutes and then it packs in every time after screwing up what's displayed on the screen into a colourful mess.

He does have a 19" TFT which we haven't installed the driver for yet ('Plug and Play' set at the moment) but I don't think that would cause it to crash...

One last thing, the lock ups aren't only happening in Windows. It's also happened in the BIOS and on the Windows XP bar moving screen before 'Welcome'.

So are we off the mark thinking it's the graphics card?

[d3fiant]

When in the bios can u get system temps, mainly CPU. Also by touch get an idea of the gfx temp by touchin the heatsink TAKIN GREAT CARE of course

[MD]

deffo sounds heat related.... if the BIOS reports resonable temps then take the stuff out of the case and bench it in open air. See if there is anything getting uber hot.

I take it you have cxase fans in it to keep the flow of air constant?

[NightshadowUK]

Yeah, there's three 120mm fans on the front, the side, and the back of the Silver NZXT Nemesis Gaming Case (his choice, not mine ).

We replaced the GFX card this morning (was an X600XT but I recommended if he was swapping he should pay the bit extra go for an X700Pro) and after an afternoon of hardkore gaming, all is apparently well.

Cheers for the help y'all!