[roytang]

Hi,

My problem is, as mentioned above, the PC hangs when playing games. The games in question are usually Warcraft III, Ragnarok Online, Max Payne, etc. It's fine for some games: The Sims seems to be ok. When I say hang, I mean "no keyboard and mouse response and I have to press the power button" type of hang.

The machine specs are as follows:

Processor: Athlon XP 1700
Motherboard: Asus A7V8X (Built in sound card, Gigabit lan)
Video card: Inno3d GF4 Ti4200 64Mb
Modem: Acer 56k
CD-ROM: Asus 52x CD-ROM drive
Hard drives: Seagate 40Gb drive
Power Supply: 350W generic

Now, I suspect it's the power supply, because, using the Asus MB monitor software I know the 3.3V supply dips to around 2.8V or less when playing the abovementioned games. We ask a guy at the store, he says it's not necessarily the power supply, might be something else like a particular combination of components, etc.

I don't want to buy any new hardware without being absolutely sure that it would solve the problem (the machine is out of warranty period already), can anyone help me determine for sure what is the actual cause of the problem?

Thanks,

- Roy

 

[Mr. PC Doc]

Now, I'm no tech with AMD, but do you mean 1700 or 1700 Mhz?

The SIms, most probably isn't working because it doesn't need as much system requirements. I'm not sure its the power supply, because you have an older AMD, and 350 W is standard for the newest Pentium 4 EE(doesn't need that much to run, maybe 83 W, the P4)

Before playing anymore games, run Disk Cleanup. Delete all unnessisary files. Now run Scandisk, and last but not least, disk defrag.

What are the system requirements for those games?

 

[roytang]

Sorry, I meant an Athlon XP 2100+, running at 1700MHz. I've tried lowering the speed to 1.3MHz too, didn't help. I've dun the disk cleanup, scandisk, defrag, etc. before, no help either. I've had this problem for a while...

I don't think it's the system requirements, they should all be comfortably safe. I have a second PC with P4 2GHz, but with a lower-end vidcard (GeForce2) but with an additional 128 memory, and the games work fine on that one.

- Roy

 

[n2gun]

Check the cpu temperature right after it locks up

 

[roytang]

Check the cpu temperature right after it locks up

That's not really something I can do...I need to reboot it remember? besides the asus mb monitor software checks temperature as well, no problems there. in fact the 3.3v supply is the only thing that breaks the threshold

 

[n2gun]

Just a shot in the dark, but you said the power supply is generic. Is it AMD certified? Some power supplies can not handle AMD as the specs aren't right.

 

[roytang]

Hi, it's been a while.

After a while, this problem started to get worse...I would see the voltage dropping even w/o any programs running...(that is, right after I login to xp)

So I decide to bite the bullet and buy a new 350W Enermax power supply. I buy it and have the store guy hook it up for me, and the PC works fine for a day or so. But now I get random rebooting and crashing, Warcraft III causes page fault errors when you try to play, XP gives random stop errors (of the BAD_POOL something something variety)

Sigh...I think there's some sort of hardware mismatch happening somewhere. Is there any way I can quickly and easily get to the source of the problem? I have neither the time, enery nor will to try and figure it out myself anymore. And if I bring it to a shop, they'll just tell me to replace one of the parts and I'll probably have a different problem in a week or so.

Any thoughts?