[damo_in_sale]

Hi chaps,

My Nephew has a PC which I helped him upgrade to make it a better gaming PC. It originally cost only 300 quid or so and hence was quite basic.

Originally it was the following, from memory:

Core i3, first gen at a guess, just over three GHz standard clock
3Gb RAM, 1x1Gb, 1x2Gb (prob running in single channel mode with that unusual config)
Integrated graphics
Obvious stuff like one HD, one DVD writer, card reader, a WIFI receiver in one PCI slot.
300 Watt Bronse certified PSU.

We've made the following mods:

Radeon 6870 (XFX dual fan... XFX HD 6870 DD cooling 1Gb AMD VGA Card Eyefinity Ready - HD-687A-ZDFC - Scan.co.uk)

And what I thought was a reasonable PSU for the job:
Coolermaster PSU 500W GX Lite Coolermaster PSU 500W GX Lite- microdirect.co.uk

GFX card use 2 x 6 pin PCI-e power.

Budget was tight, hence the lower spec PSU. Even so, I expected that this PSU would be able to do the job. I would expect 500 watts to be more than enough since the old PSU was 300, and I cannot believe that the new gfx card would use all the additional 200 watts.
As per title, 3DMark Vantage and 11 cause a reboot. Vantage gave a blue screen. 11 gave, if I remember rightly, a reboot with no blue screen.

Minecraft seemed fine. Black OPs was unplayable- 60 plus fps easy at 1080p, but on occasion become a slideshow- usually when entering a new environment (looking at other forums, that could be a problem with the game though). As yet he has no other PC games, thought Crysis 2 might be a good test in the future.

But regarding PCMark reboot, could the PSU be insufficient?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Damo

[EndlessWaves]

I haven't looked up the specs of the PSU but CoolerMaster should be a reasonable one so I'd be more inclined to think it's a dodgy component, or possibly something overheating due to a poorly ventilated low end case - although if it were the graphics card I'd have expected visual artefacts.

The first thing to establish is that it is caused by one of the two new components. Did you run 3dMark on the system before you upgraded it? If not then take out the graphics card, plug the old PSU back in temporarily and see if it still crashes.

[damo_in_sale]

Originally Posted by EndlessWaves

I haven't looked up the specs of the PSU but CoolerMaster should be a reasonable one so I'd be more inclined to think it's a dodgy component, or possibly something overheating due to a poorly ventilated low end case - although if it were the graphics card I'd have expected visual artefacts.

The first thing to establish is that it is caused by one of the two new components. Did you run 3dMark on the system before you upgraded it? If not then take out the graphics card, plug the old PSU back in temporarily and see if it still crashes.

I will try your recommendations, although the PC isn't here so that might take a little time.

The case is low end. However, I cannot believe that the instance the Gfx card is required to do some serious work the system overheats. I would expect it to at least draw a few seconds worth of frames.

Maybe furmark, then superpi, then furmark plus superpi might be a good idea?

Does 500 watts sound ok for this system?

PS, sorry, didn't do any diagnostics before the upgrade. I simply assumed that the PC would be incapable of doing either 3DMark benchmark (I incorrectly wrote PCmark, when I really meant 3DMark, now corrected).

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by damo_in_sale

Maybe furmark, then superpi, then furmark plus superpi might be a good idea?

It's worth trying. If it works it'll help establish that the problem isn't a general stress one.

Originally Posted by damo_in_sale

Does 500 watts sound ok for this system?

Many 500Ws could (just about) handle a pair of 6870s on an i3 system, it's loads.

Originally Posted by damo_in_sale

PS, sorry, didn't do any diagnostics before the upgrade. I simply assumed that the PC would be incapable of doing either 3DMark benchmark (I incorrectly wrote PCmark, when I really meant 3DMark, now corrected).

Well there are far more old components than new components that could be causing the problem so until you rule them out it's most likely to have been a pre-existing problem.

[iainl7]

There's 500W and 500W, though. I've just had to replace my 500W card because too many of the amps were on the 5V rail, not the 12V.

However, that's not the case for the Coolermaster, which looks pretty well balanced.

[damo_in_sale]

Thanks chaps.

Had another look today. Prime 95 was fine. Furmark was fine but I gave up after about half an hour. The Nephew then told me that he'd tried Furmark the other night and it gave a bsod but after a longer period. I installed Crysis as Minecraft barely stresses a calculator, and Black Ops seems to have lots of reported issues on PC.
We got a few seconds into the game and it crashed (just the game, not the PC). Since we had a one week dead on arrival swap facility that expired in about an hour, I decided the most sensible thing to do was get the card replaced.

The Nephews been playing Crysis on High, 1080p for a few hours now without issue. He says the performance on this is better than with Black Ops which just goes to show how poorly optimised that game is since it looks poor by comparison. But Black Ops is however much better than it was, less stuttery.

[damo_in_sale]

Originally Posted by iainl7

There's 500W and 500W, though. I've just had to replace my 500W card because too many of the amps were on the 5V rail, not the 12V.

However, that's not the case for the Coolermaster, which looks pretty well balanced.

Yeah, the coolermaster looks good to me.

The guy in the shop suggested that a psu with one rail was better than a psu with two rails, since all the power would be delivered over that that one rail and not divided over the two.

I found that interesting since I had assumed two rails were better than one.

Was that chap correct?

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by damo_in_sale

Was that chap correct?

It's an ongoing debate, the short version is that both methods have their advantages and you can get supplies from respected makers with either option.

With two rails you do need to make sure not to overload one of them by plugging everything into it but the power supply manual should have pointed this out and said which ones to use first (although with two rails instead of more it may be that the motherboard is using one and all the other connectors the other so there's nothing to decide).

[damo_in_sale]

Thanks chaps

The Nephew reports his PC has been great since we swapped out the GPU for a replacement. Seems the PSU is fine and we had a faulty GFX card.

On a different note, I upgraded my GFX card to a Gigabyte Windforce GTX 670 today. On the way home from the store I was trying to remember what PSU I had installed in my Coolermaster Cosmos- I feared I might have given it little thought originally. I was very pleased to see an Antec Truepower 750 when I opened the case.

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by damo_in_sale

I was very pleased to see an Antec Truepower 750 when I opened the case.

Time to go back to the store for a second GTX 670 then?

[damo_in_sale]

Originally Posted by EndlessWaves

Time to go back to the store for a second GTX 670 then?

Christ, I only went in for some speakers. The missus would kill me

[damo_in_sale]

Nephews PC is still working like a dream.

However, I did have a problem with my rig (see sig) and 3DMark 11 and Vantage.

Both would hard reboot my machine upon starting the benchmark, pretty much every time.

Did loads of diagnostics, including Furmark for hours and hours, same with the Intel Burn test, and did memtest for a day or so. No problems.

Also, never had any other stability issues whatsoever on this PC build. System never crashes, no BSOD's. I think I have had the very rare occasion when a game has crashed (maybe twice, so few I can't remember), but not the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate). Nothing to worry about.

And yet 3DMark ALWAYS crashed the OS and hard rebooted the machine.

I looked at the Futuremark forums and saw many folk with the same issue. Satisfied that my system was healthy, I gave up and uninstalled.

Tonight I looked agan on the Futuremark forums for this issue and the Futuremark folk had answers- not check your RAM etc. (probably a hardware issue etc., not our software etc. as expected) but turn off an obscure 3DMark feature called System Info. You need to go to the help menu to do this.

Lo and behold 3DMark 11 now runs trouble free.

[TheBay]

Originally Posted by EndlessWaves

It's an ongoing debate, the short version is that both methods have their advantages and you can get supplies from respected makers with either option.

With two rails you do need to make sure not to overload one of them by plugging everything into it but the power supply manual should have pointed this out and said which ones to use first (although with two rails instead of more it may be that the motherboard is using one and all the other connectors the other so there's nothing to decide).

It is an ongoing debate, I have a quad rail PSU.

Pro's and cons to all ways, but as long as the rails have enough power for the devices and are within spec it shouldn't really matter if the design has been implemented correctly.

Glad the OP got this sorted, was going to say it sounds like graphics card or memory related.

[damo_in_sale]

Originally Posted by TheBay

It is an ongoing debate, I have a quad rail PSU.

Pro's and cons to all ways, but as long as the rails have enough power for the devices and are within spec it shouldn't really matter if the design has been implemented correctly.

Glad the OP got this sorted, was going to say it sounds like graphics card or memory related.

Thanks.

Was interested in the behaviour of 3DMark though. Lots of people reported reboots with system info enabled. like I say, my system is rock solid, except when running 3DMark 11 with system info enabled.

[cokker]

3DMark always crashes for me too, I gave up using it but the Heaven and Valley benchmarks work well.

[damo_in_sale]

Originally Posted by cokker

3DMark always crashes for me too, I gave up using it but the Heaven and Valley benchmarks work well.

Did it hard reboot the system though?

[Peeej]

3d Mark ran for me at stock with a 7950 but crashed as soon as I overclocked it whereas Heaven and Vally completed with no problems.

Only crashed 3d mark not the whole PC....but I had to restart the system to get rid of the crashed program as I couldn't use taskman

[cokker]

Originally Posted by damo_in_sale

Did it hard reboot the system though?

No, not really. The first time I tried running it I got a white screen after the first benchmark but I could ctrl/alt/delete out of it, after a couple of weeks and a driver update I tried again and got the same white screen but had to hard reset the rig (twice).

I've run nearly all 3dmark's over the years but they are starting to feel old and awkward now.