AMD Athlon 1200mhz WinXp 30GB (about 15gb used, i dont waste my space with music.. Just games ) Geforce2 Some crap sound card.. Blueyonder Cable (best cable evar!)
I don't know if this is of any help, especially since power supplies have been discussed already, but:
Two days ago my computer shut down for no reason while it was encoding an MPEG video. I wasn't in the room at the moment so I figured that it was some sort of a random power failure or maybe the software crashed and Windows shut down for some reason. Yesterday the same thing happened to me while I was at the keyboard and I started wondering what was wrong. Turns out that my processor had a surface temperature of whopping 85-90 degrees celsius. First I figured it had to be because of a malfunctioning CPU fan, since I've encountered that problem before, but when I opened the case it was ridiculously hot inside. After a bit of touchy-feely I noticed that the hottest component was the PSU, so I began checking it out. After a while I found the problem: The PSU was functioning normally but the fan wasn't working so it kept overheating itself and the neighbouring components. This in turn lead to the computer shutting itself down as a defensive measure (my Asus motherboard is equipped with a CPU overheating protection feature).
Now I'm running this system with a spare 250W power supply until I can get to the store on monday to buy a new 350W or 400W one. I don't dare to run any graphics-intensive stuff since I fear that the GeForce 4 I have might short out the PSU. Damn computers, always something broken...
SBV, what's your power supply rated at (not only total, but also 3.3+5.0V rails - it should have a table on the side of the powersupply that tells you the output ratings for each). It does sound like a PSU problem, although it could be other things. Did you install new hardware right before (<2 weeks) before you started having this problem? It might also be overheating as mentioned, since some motherboards have a cut-off temp limit where it will shut down the system if core temp goes above a certain level. Check the thermal grease contact between your processor and heatsink (if it has a thermal pad take it off and make sure to remove all the sticky stuff, then re-apply thermal grease).
*edit* All it takes is a screwdriver and unscrewing four-six screws, and you can pull out your powersupply (without even unhooking the molex connectors and whatnot) and tell us its rating...otherwise, we don't really have enough information. If you are really against opening up your computer, i guess you should do some ram tests or look at the bios temp probes in cmos setup first.
Comments
AMD Athlon 1200mhz
WinXp
30GB (about 15gb used, i dont waste my space with music.. Just games )
Geforce2
Some crap sound card..
Blueyonder Cable (best cable evar!)
256MB Ram also.
I think it is a problem with my ram, is there any places i can get a good like, ram booster from?
Two days ago my computer shut down for no reason while it was encoding an MPEG video. I wasn't in the room at the moment so I figured that it was some sort of a random power failure or maybe the software crashed and Windows shut down for some reason. Yesterday the same thing happened to me while I was at the keyboard and I started wondering what was wrong. Turns out that my processor had a surface temperature of whopping 85-90 degrees celsius. First I figured it had to be because of a malfunctioning CPU fan, since I've encountered that problem before, but when I opened the case it was ridiculously hot inside. After a bit of touchy-feely I noticed that the hottest component was the PSU, so I began checking it out. After a while I found the problem: The PSU was functioning normally but the fan wasn't working so it kept overheating itself and the neighbouring components. This in turn lead to the computer shutting itself down as a defensive measure (my Asus motherboard is equipped with a CPU overheating protection feature).
Now I'm running this system with a spare 250W power supply until I can get to the store on monday to buy a new 350W or 400W one. I don't dare to run any graphics-intensive stuff since I fear that the GeForce 4 I have might short out the PSU. Damn computers, always something broken...
Had this comp for about a year now..
I aint opening it up and feeling around, no way.
*edit* All it takes is a screwdriver and unscrewing four-six screws, and you can pull out your powersupply (without even unhooking the molex connectors and whatnot) and tell us its rating...otherwise, we don't really have enough information. If you are really against opening up your computer, i guess you should do some ram tests or look at the bios temp probes in cmos setup first.