[ossiebeans]

Hello all,
I've been having great difficulty with my pc - games will crash 5 minutes into them and the computer will randomly restart. I supsected this may be due to an overheating problem so i installed a temperature monitor called Hmonitor.

Now as far as i can tell the temperatures all look good, with the highest temp being 30 degrees celcius for my motherboard. The only problem it seemed to have is under voltage, the core and aux were both +1.70 and highlighted in red.

Now i don't know much about this so i thought I'd ask those in the know - is this something to be worried about? Is there any free temp monitors you would recommend?

Thank you for your time,
Ossie

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the motherboard temp is usually fairly low, that doesnt matter too much. its the CPU temp that is most important. check out your temps on that both at idle and under load (after playing a game for a while).

the red numbers on your voltage are most likely the problem. please list the make/model of your cpu, so we can check what the voltages it wants are.
go into your BIOS, if you have an option to set the voltages for the problem settings to auto, do so. undervolting your cpu could easily cause the problems you describe.

[audioboy]

the motherboard temp is usually fairly low, that doesnt matter too much. its the CPU temp that is most important. check out your temps on that both at idle and under load (after playing a game for a while).

the red numbers on your voltage are most likely the problem. please list the make/model of your cpu, so we can check what the voltages it wants are.
go into your BIOS, if you have an option to set the voltages for the problem settings to auto, do so. undervolting your cpu could easily cause the problems you describe.

[ossiebeans]

Hi, i'm running a Athlon 3000. I'm not sure how to find out any more details of the model.
Thanks

[ossiebeans]

OK i went into BIOS, i didnt exactly see the aux and core anywhere but i set Vcore to auto, but the program still shows the voltage in red and +1.7OV.

[audioboy]

OK, the correct voltages will be determined by exactly what type of processor you have. if its an athlon XP, cpu voltage should be 1.65. if its an athlon 64, voltage should be 1.5
you are overvolting that sucker, which will definitely cause problems! potentially cause overheat problems as well.

use everest home to get the exact model of your cpu. everest has a temp monitor too.

post back what you find.

edit, did you F10 out of bios to save the changes and exit?

Edited by audioboy, 07 July 2005 - 07:07 PM.

[ossiebeans]

OK, its an XP. Am i supposed to be changing the Vcore settings here? I assumed so and changed it to 1.65 and saved the changes but it is still saying +1.70. What is going on here??
Thanks

[audioboy]

ok, lets check a couple things.
first is in bios, under the voltage settings. if there is an option for standard (fail safe) or high performance settings, set it to standard.
also look at the voltages being reported from the power supply. list what the voltages are on the 12v and 5v rails, both plus and minus.

also check those numbers against what voltages are being reported in everest.

do you know the make/model of your power supply? might as well tell me make/model of your motherboard too, available from everest.

[ossiebeans]

I checked in BIOS and made sure it was on the stable settings.
Everest lists the voltages as such:
CPU Core 1.70 V
+3.3 V 3.31 V
+5 V 4.89 V
+12 V 12.80 V
-12 V -12.72 V
-5 V -4.82 V

My motherboard is a Asus A7N8X-E, and the power supply is a 400V Acer, I don't know any more details of it.

[audioboy]

OK, we found the problem. that power supply is overvolting on the 12v rails. there should be no more than a 5% deviation, which on the 12v rail would equal plus or minus .6volts.
acer is usually decent enough equipment, but in this case you need a new psu. strongly suggest going with the name brands like antec, enermax, thermaltake. have heard that rosewill (newegg.com brand) is decent too, but I havent tried them personally. go with 400 watts or more.
a quality psu costs a bit more, but if you get a good one now, it will last thru the next upgrade cycle or two, and deliver rock solid power. so for example, a 480 watt or 550 watt now will be good for years to come, even with upgrades.

heres a link on a rosewill model. real good specs, on sale for a real good price! have a look at other models, buy what you are comfortable with.

[ossiebeans]

OK, i am considering purchasing a Antec 480. This voltage i have would definitely be a problem then? Not that i doubt your knowledge but i would like to be more confident as it costs $180 AUD.
Either way thanks so very much for your patience and help.

[audioboy]

wow, you down under? those prices are painful!
yes, that voltage is definitely a problem. it can cause damage to the whole system.
I would be happy to have another tech take a look at this and offer their opinion- I have no problem with that at all. it is good to make sure before laying out what will be a lot of cash.
hold off until someone else posts in here, and so you know, I will not tell them what to say, just ask for a second opinion.

[ossiebeans]

Yeh i'm in Aus. I found it for $140 now though, and I'll keep shopping around. Thanks a lot for your help, I think I'll pick it up tomorrow. God i hope this fixes the problem - I've had it since December.
Cheers.

[audioboy]

I contacted several other staffers to take a look and give their opinion, so someone will be along to give the yeah or nay on my assessment.

cheers!

[gerryf]

yawn...tired....too early.

My two cents, fwiw...I, dunno. The problem you are having with the 12volt rail does not worry me since it is primarily used for running things with motors....if you were haing harddrives or cd-rom drives dying, or fan speeds acting oddly, that would be where this would manifest.

It is clearly out of whack, but wouldn't, to me, seem to be the cause.

The problem you described would be more likely if it were the 3.3 volt rail, since that supplies the cpu, mobo, and memory--the bigger suspect in a random reboot, or game crash.

When you say crash, do you mean it crashes to desktop? And also does it crash AND reboot, or crash and sometimes reboot?

The 1.7 volt reading red in hmonitor is not unusual--hmonitor is somewhat notorious for this given the lack of following spec on the part of chip sensor makers. Asus makes its own motherboard monitor, have you tried that?

Also, from what I understand, that board only supports 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7--no in between settings, so that may be why it defaults back up.

What is the temp on the CPU? Did I miss it?

You have everest, could you save a report and attach it--not cut and paste, attach.

What games? What programs cause this?

What RAM? How much ram?

[ossiebeans]

A few minutes into any game i try (Half-Life 2, Battlefield Vietnam, Rome Total War), the game will crash to desktop. Sometimes before i even get past the menu, but it doesnt always restart when it crashes. This computer also randomly restarts randomly, I dont have to be using anything other than Firefox or iTunes or sometimes nothing at all for it to restart.

As far as i can tell nothing is overheating, i know the cpu can get a bit hot - it's 50C in the everest report, but no matter what i do to cool it i still get the problem.

Everest says i have 512 MB (PC2700 DDR SDRAM), don't know much else about it.

I attached the Everest report. Thank you for your time fellas.

Attached Files

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