Comp shutting off in certain circumstances

[Cronius]

Computer completely froze yesterday - not even the power button would turn it off, thus I flipped the switch on the power supply. Welllll, now I have an issue where it'll completely shut off (as in immediately loses power) in certain
circumstances:

- Playing full screen videos - shuts off within 5 min
- Archiving a file in winrar - shuts off within 1-2 min, providing it's a large file and taking that long
- Playing WoW - shuts off within 5 min

However, I can play winamp, run Photoshop CS3, & surf the web indefinitely with no problems.

Any suggestions with what it could be? Think maybe the processor or motherboard got mucked up, but odd it would be only in specific situations.

[E. Honda]

Make sure your CPU fan is working properly. Sounds like an overheating issue.

edit: I had a second thought from past experience. Some motherboards have a built-in temperature sensor that shuts off the pc when a certain temp is reached. They have been known to go bad. Your motherboard might have such a sensor. You can usually turn it off in the BIOS setup screen. You might see if this is the case, and if you can turn it off to see if that fixes the problem.

[Hank Ringworm]

I had the same problem with my laptop. Could do most things without problems, but games and video would kill it. It was an overheating issue, as E. Honda suggested.

[Mikael79]

Have you made any hardware changes lately?

You may want to run a test on your RAM. Definitely want to check for heat issues, as suggested above.

Which version of Windows (or other OS) are you running?

[Cronius]

Thanks guys, you were right - it's a heating issue. The machine is home built (by me); Vista, Asus P5LD2 R2.0 motherboard, Intel duo 1.8GHz chip.

In a test, I used Winrar to split and archive a 215MB file. Under normal MHz operations, the CPU climbed in temp up to 96 C - at which point I stopped it. No doubt it goes up to 98-100 C, which is when it shuts off. I decreased the MHz multiplier, and, although painfully slow, it fully archived the 215MB file, getting up to about 85 C.

The fans seem to working OK. I didn't see where this particular motherboard has a temp sensor (looked in the manual, BIOS). While I'm fairly computer literate, I'm by far a 'pro', so I may be missing something.

[fumanstan]

Might be the contact between the heatsink and the CPU is off, or the thermal paste applied incorrectly (depending if you used the retail heatsink/fan or a third party). 85 C is WAY high for a modern CPU. Personally, my Core 2 Duo at home runs under 40 and probably shouldn't break 60 during load.

[danwiz]

How do you know what temperature your CPU is running at?? Is there some little application which gives you that information or what? Just curious!

[fumanstan]

How do you know what temperature your CPU is running at?? Is there some little application which gives you that information or what? Just curious!

There are programs that can do it. Speedfan is a great one.

[Cronius]

I'll open her up later tonight and double check everything is good and tight; using the retail (intel) heatsink. Even just "sitting there," it registers around 65-70.

How do you know what temperature your CPU is running at?? Is there some little application which gives you that information or what? Just curious!

When I bought the Asus motherboard, it came with some software for that. Otherwise, what fumanstan said.

[danwiz]

Thanks guys! I downloaded Speedfan and installed it and although I have little need for something like that - it's interesting for me.

[Cronius]

Son of a.... the heat sink did in fact, somehow, get loose and wasn't sitting properly on the CPU. Corrected it, now she's running at a cool 36C. Issued solved - thanks for the assist guys.

danwiz - you never know man, it may come in handy one day!