Brought A New Computer But All Games Crash

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TimmyJayne

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I have brought a new computer and built it my self.
The specs are:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
512mb Ram
Leadtek Geforce Nvidia 6800 256mb
Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit
160GB Hard Drive
Biostar N4SLI-A9
Xp Home SP2
Psu- Jeantech 450w

The Games on this PC just always freeze sometimes and other times they will not.
I have tried near enough everything i have updated drivers,chipset,sound cards processors. I have looked into tempartures also and my cpu when inactive runs at 28-30 oC so surely it cant gain enough heat when playing games to over heat ? I have looked around nearly all the websites and they have offered no help at all so i am writing this to get a different answer if any one can help can they please post an answer or email be as soon as possible, any suggestions would be great as i want to play new games with my new computer

TimmyJayne
 
You didn't mention whether or not you have updated your bios. Have you?

Also, I don't know much about Jeantech PSUs. Did it come with a case? If so, there is a chance that this is your problem. Low quality PSUs case hard-to-diagnose random crashing.

How many amps on the 12v rail? You usually can find this information on the sticker attached to the PSU, and you'll want to have around 24amps or so (mine has 32amps and my system is similar to yours).
 
I brought the PSU seperately from PC World for £45 so i dont think its low quality on the side of the psu is says this under voltage:

+12V1 = 14A
+12V2 = 15A
-12V = 1A

I also tried to update the bios but there didnt seem to be any updates at the time for my mother board from the motherboards website.
 
that psu is a damn ripoff. you want a minimum of 18 amps on each +12v rail. i reccomend buying a quality name brand (antec, thermaltake, enermax for example) supply rated for 500 watts of better.

you should also be aware they the motherboard you listed there is rather low on quality, performance.

but your main priority should be to get the PSU replaced with one capable of powering your rig.
 
zephead said:
that psu is a damn ripoff. you want a minimum of 18 amps on each +12v rail. i reccomend buying a quality name brand (antec, thermaltake, enermax for example) supply rated for 500 watts of better.

you should also be aware they the motherboard you listed there is rather low on quality, performance.

but your main priority should be to get the PSU replaced with one capable of powering your rig.

Excessive (especially for his system), but he's on to something. 12v @ 14/15a respectively should be more than enough though.
 
I may have read the PSU wrong. The side of the psu under the voltage said the following i dont know if this changes anything or not:

+5.3V +5 -12V1
30A 28A 14A
 
What happened to your

+12V1 = 14A
+12V2 = 15A

???

And I agree with Rick. My antec PSU has

+12V1 = 16A
+12V2 = 16A

That is a total of 32A and is BAJILLIONS of power for most systems. As long as your TOTAL of both rails is say... 24A or more, that is plenty.
 
So if it is not a power problems can anyone suggest what the problem is then please. The games stutter randomly thoughtout the game and then restarts to a numerous amount different spec games from processor speeds of 600 to 1.8 GHZ. I would appriecate any help anyone can give :giddy: as i would really like to sort this problem.
 
I don't think this is your problem but we need to check. So google Coolbits2 and download it. Then run the install. This is a small executable thatopens up the overclocking capabilities on your Nvidia product. Also will give you the Temperature window for the GPU. What temp is your GPU running at?
 
Well games such as :
Star Wars - Dark Knight
Spell Force- Order of the Dawn
Sacred
Warhammer - Dawn of War
Battle Field Middle Earth (Wil Not Even Work Anymore)

These are a few games i have tried and they all match up to my system specs any help will be greatly apprieated :)
 
I would run a diagnostic on your ram next, to rule out that as a possibility.

Go to www.memtest.org and run that on your system for 6 or 7 passes. It will take a few hours to run.
 
it's still looking like a power problem. there are even generic PSUs out there with decent numbers, but in practice thier supplys deliver poor voltage and still cause system lockups. the 6800 video card you've got needs quite a bit of juice...

you can shed some more light on the subject by entering your BIOS and reading off the voltages (usually displayed under 'hardware monitor')
 
The memtest did not report any errors after 7 passes. i cannot access the bios as i do not know which button corresponds to my motherboard and the manfacturers website is not very useful.

Anyone could suggest anything else i could try it would be appriceated.
 
Hello i downloaded a progrma to help me read the voltages it said ..

CPU temp - 27oC
Cpu Fan Speed 3125

Voltage

VCore 1.39V
VCC3 - 3.2V
VBatt- 3.02V
+5 - 5.02V
+12 - 12.09V

If any one could help can u please reply
 
Your voltages and temps look good. I have no idea about the quality of your PSU but if it is of even moderate quality it should be able to power your rig. I ran a similar set-up on a 250w PSU.

Your next steps should be to flash the BIOS to the latest version if needed. When booting up push the Delete key and hold it till BIOS appears. This is where if you don't know what you are doing you can cause problems. I suspect that there are some settings that are causing instability. So try the below:

First, you need to try and determine what version of BIOS you are running. You can download a little utility called CPUz from http://www.cpuid.com which gives you all kinds of very useful info about your RAM and CPU as well as mobo and BIOS version. If BIOS is an older version then you'll need to flash it (should be instructions on the manufacturers website) the latest.

If the version number is up to date then start setting things back to auto if they have been overclocked. Getting the system to stability is your aim here. Set RAM to auto and CPU to auto at the least.

After that see if you have any better performance. IF not then time to play with the drivers. Download DrivercleanerPRO (google it) and remove your Nvidia Driver fro the system. You do this by using the windws remove programs utility and then running Drivercleaner (Nvidia cleaner) in safe mode. After the reboot you install the latest Nvidia driver.

Let us know how you fare after the above.
 
I went into the bios screen and restored all the settings to defualt with a handy little button however just tried playing LORT : Battle For Middle Earth and it lasted longer than usual about 2 minutes more then crashed out again so i am going to try the other suggestion now.
 
I have not updated the bios as I do not have a floppy drive available as it has not worked from the star lol but on the biostar website they said it is not advised to do so. however i have run the driver cleaner and installed the latest nvidia drivers and also the latest leadtek drivers for the graphics. Sadly, this has not worked.

However i have noticed that all the games that crash within minutes are DVD ROM games such as sacred and LORT Battle for middle earth.
within the computer i have 2 drives a LG cd/rw drive and a LITE ON dvd drive. The DVD Drive is the Slave and the CD Driver is the Master. i have no idea if this makes a difference. All the other games that run from the cd drive only stutter and sometimes crash. also the two drives are sharing a IDE cable.

If any one can help it would be apprieated Timmy
 
Do not install the leadtek AND Nvidia Drivers. Just install the Nvidia driver. SO go back inand remove the display driver, run drivercleaner and just install the Nvidia driver.

Check and make sure that your floppy drive is properly installed. You have a 50/50 chance that the data plug in upside down. If the light is on continuously then this is the case so just reverse it at the drive side. Make sure the floppy power plug is fully seated.

It shouldn't matter on new drives but for some reason it does so try the following. Set the jumper on the CD drive to master and the DVD drive to slave and see if this helps. If it doesn't then unplug the CD drive and run just the DVD drive set at master. If this doesn't help then run just the CD drive set as master.
 
I fixed the problem i hope, i played one game ,that would normally crash after minutes, for hours its cool :grinthumb. i performed the following steps.

1. I took out my graphics and sound cards and inserted them in different slots within the machine.

2. this prompted a reinstall of both cards which i installed the sound and graphics driver ( leadtek and nvidia).

3.Within the Nvida settings i enabled the manager which gave me loads of setting i didnt change any.

now the game i have been trying to play since i brought it seems to work :) :haha:

Thanks for all the help and i hope the help in this forum helps others who have problems like me :) cheers guys and girls .

Timmy
 
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