Before I order one, I want to get some feedback.

My PC just randomly shuts down. I wait a bit, hit the power button, and it comes back on. The fact that it's only occurred while playing games makes me wonder if it's overheating, but:

a) speedfan says my temps are fine (although it's not reading my GPU temp, but an overheating GPU wouldn't shut the PC down, right?)

b) if it were overheating I'd get something when I initially tried to turn it on, right? Fans somewhere? blinking lights? My PC doesn't do anything at all when I first attempt to turn it on.


Should I consider anything else? Thanks a bunch.

[Edited on February 28, 2009 at 11:37 PM. Reason : ]

2/28/2009 11:36:01 PM

cpu is probably overheating. check the heatsink/fan

[Edited on February 28, 2009 at 11:41 PM. Reason : ]

2/28/2009 11:41:18 PM

The fan's spinning, and speedfan says the cores are running at 50C idle and 58C while playing Fallout.

Would that remove the CPU from consideration, or is it still a possibility?


Oh, I've also removed/returned the power cable each time it's happened before it turned back on. This could be completely unrelated, though.

[Edited on February 28, 2009 at 11:48 PM. Reason : ]

2/28/2009 11:44:01 PM

what kind of cooling do you have? 58 sounds pretty high just for playing fallout. have you oc'd? need specs on your setup

2/28/2009 11:48:35 PM

It's a core 2 duo 7200 with stock heating and no overclocking.

2/28/2009 11:49:23 PM

Run memtest and see if it restarts just to rule out the software side of the equation.

3/1/2009 10:18:47 AM

my bet is on bad memory

3/1/2009 10:36:16 AM

hmm. And with bad memory I'd get no lights or fans during my first attempt at startup?

How could I check for bad memory? (this would be optimal; I was considering new memory anyways)

3/1/2009 3:45:35 PM

and *nix installation disk will have memtest86 on it

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu

download, burn, and reboot

3/1/2009 5:11:40 PM

A quick and dirty way to test a PSU is to disconnect it, jump black to green and see if it comes on. If it does, test the voltages with a multi-meter.

memtest will test your memory

3/2/2009 1:41:45 AM