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Total Lockup While Gaming


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#1
Holkeye

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Hello,

I just bought and built a new system after Christmas, and it's wonderful, except for one huge glaring problem. During gameplay, my entire system randomly locks up. It doesn't restart, it doesn't shut down, it just freezes, and nothing can get it to stop other than restarting the whole computer. Sometimes I can play for an hour before it happens, and sometimes it happens after 3 minutes. I'm relatively new at the whole putting-together-my-own-computer game, so I've been doing a lot of research. The first thing that I've found, is that many people who have this problem are told to run a test on their RAM. So, I went and made a boot disk of Memtest86+. I ran that, and it froze about five minutes in. This led me to think that my RAM is indeed the trouble, so I made a boot disk of Microsoft's Memory Test, just to be sure. This ran through a full pass with no problems. (Granted, the test couldn't check my entire RAM, because I have 4GB, but am running Windows32, so it only shows up as about 3.5) After this was finished, I re-booted with the Memtest86+ disk. Once again, lockup at 5:33. This time, I wrote down the test results at lockup. I present them to you here:

Posted Image

Whew. So, my questions are:

What should my next step/steps be?
What else could it be, besides a RAM problem?


Oh, and my sysspecs:

Windows: Windows XP5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 3
Memory (RAM): 3327 MB
CPU Info: Pentium® Dual-Core CPU E5200 @ 2.50GHz
CPU Speed: 2489.1 MHz
Sound card: Realtek HD Audio output
Display Adapters: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series | ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series | NetMeeting driver | RDPDD Chained DD
Monitors: 1
Screen Resolution: 1680 X 1050 - 32 bit
Network: Network Present
Network Adapters: Realtek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC - Packet Scheduler Miniport
CD / DVD Drives: D: TSSTcorpCDDVDW SH-S223Q
Hard Disks: C: 931.5GB
Hard Disks - Free: C: 539.8GB
AC Power Status: OnLine
BIOS Info: AT/AT COMPATIBLE | 06/19/08 | GBT - 42302e31
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. EP45-DS3L





Edited by Holkeye, 07 January 2009 - 07:04 AM.

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#2
Pvt. Riches

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Sounds like a very nice system ya got yourself there. The only thing I can think of, is to exchange the ram. If you suspect it's a ram problem, exchange it for another stick and try that. But if you are going to do it, do it before the exchange date on your reciept.

Good luck.
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#3
Holkeye

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Thanks for the reply~

I'm going to try running memtest with only one 2GB stick in, and then the other. Hopefully then, if it is the RAM, I can isolate the one that's defective and do something about it. I'll post again afterward.

EDIT: I ran Memtest with each stick, and it completed without incident. That seems kind of strange to me. I'm guessing it's probably a temperature thing. Any other ideas/suggestions?

Edited by Holkeye, 07 January 2009 - 01:51 PM.

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#4
Pvt. Riches

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I used to have problems with overheating during gameplay too. But it wouldn't lock my system up, it would reboot me. As Soon as it did, I would go into the bios to see the temp I was running at, and it used to go as high as 92 degrees celcius (sorry, Canadian here). It would be in the red and blinking. Not a good sign. I took the fan off the CPU and cleaned all the dust off it, and there was alot of it too! Cleaned the heat sync, put some new compound stuff on it, put it back on, and haven't had a problem since. I would check to see what temp you are running at next time it locks up.
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#5
Holkeye

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I run SpeedFan religiously, and my Core temps seem to hover around 52C while gaming. When I have a freezeup, I can't check SpeedFan, but I open it up immediately after reboot, and the temps are already coming down from the 50C zone. I think I'm going to try getting some better thermal paste and see if that helps any.
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#6
stettybet0

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Holkeye,

You say that Memtest works fine with one stick of RAM. Do games work fine with one stick of RAM?

If so, my hypothesis is that you are undervolting your RAM. With only one stick in, the system can manage, but with two sticks in, the strain is too much for the system to properly function with too little voltage.

You should determine what voltage your RAM recommends (usually found on the packaging or on the RAM itself), and set the RAM voltage to that in the BIOS.
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#7
Holkeye

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Hmm, that's an interesting theory. I can run games with both sticks, but like I said, eventually the games cause the freeze. I haven't tried running anything with only one stick in, other than memtest. The packaging doesn't have a recommended voltage, but I'm going to look it up online. My PSU is a Corsair 450VX, if that gives you some more information.

EDIT: Newegg.com lists the voltage for my RAM @ 2.0W. SpeedFan gives me this information:
Vcore1: 1.12v
Vcore2: 1.89V
+3.3V: 3.20V
+5V: 4.97V
+12V: 0.90V
-12V: -16.97V
-5V: -8.48V
+5V: 5.19V
Vbat: 3.12V

Sadly, I have no idea how to decipher it.

Edited by Holkeye, 08 January 2009 - 08:06 PM.

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#8
kharizmatik

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LOL i just popped in to say i love the avatar you have WHUT IT DEW :)
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#9
Holkeye

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Issue is solved. Thank you everyone for your help in diagnosing. The problem ended up being my RAM not getting enough power to it, just like Stetty mentioned. After multiple tweakings, I am now freeze-free. I will recommend this site to everyone I know~
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