Sparkle nVidia 8600GTS problems

[laughable]

I realize that this is mainly a tech discussion forum rather than a tech support forum, but I'm in dire straits here right now, and I apologize. I recently bought my computer and built it ground up, spending hours making sure that each component is compatible with every other component. Anyway, to get down to the specs:

Win XP Pro
Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 2.13Ghz
2Gb DDR2-800 ram
Sparkle nVidia 8600GTS 256mb
XFX 680i LT SLI motherboard

Anyway. The problem is, whenever I play games like CS:Source, Half Life 2, Stalker, or basically any high end graphical game, my computer will randomly go into a BSOD, and restart straight away. (Without giving me a chance to check what the actual error is) I've made sure that my computer is completely up to date in terms of drivers, and got the latest Direct X, etc.

I -think- I've narrowed it down to the graphic card overheating, since I can games like Warcraft 3 for hours on end without any real problems. It doesn't crash either, when I'm not playing any games. While the first crash may take a while to occur, once it has actually happened, the crashes become more frequent. (After restarting the computer and the game, of course.)

I've been checking on the GPU temperature with an nVidia monitor, and it reports to me that the GPU temp is idling at 50 degrees celcius, and whenever I recover from a crash to check on the temperature again, it's usually nearing 60 degrees. I've gotten RivaTuner to force the GPU fanspeed up to maximum at all times, but I'm not sure if it's actually doing anything as most hardware monitors I've downloaded can't actually detect my GPU fan (Not sure if it means anything)

Another (possibly) unrelated problem is, when I was attempting to install Windows Vista (without having any old OS's on) it would also give me a BSOD in the very final part of installation. I haven't really looked into that much, however; I just installed Windows XP instead when Vista failed after 4 attempts.

Would appreciate any help or replies, thanks guys!


Edit: Just realised I posted this in the wrong section. Not good for a first post, sorry! Eheh.

 

[CMH]

Graphics card?

If your graphics card is starting to overheat, you'd see artifacts. BSODs usually happen with CPU problems I reckon. But CPU overheating usually causes restarts....

Use that Rivatuner of yours to put a load on your grahics card, and monitor your temps, and see if it actually crashes.

After that, you might want to use CoreTemp or any other CPU loading program to put a load on your CPU, and see if that causes any crashes. You might want to leave each one on individually (only one, not the other) overnight, and see if its still on in the morning.

 

[laughable]

Thanks for the reply, CMH!

But okay, well, I did just that, and it seems my GPU peeks at 76 degrees, and my CPU peeks at 50 degrees. The GPU thing seems high in my opinion, but I'm not sure what the maximum temp for a GPU should be. I'll have a look at the CoreTemp thing later tonight, though.

Edit: If it helps, I'm mostly running 32bit programs.

 

[laughable]

Haha.

I went through all the diagnostics checks on my computer, and to be safe, I ran a memtest on my memory. Lo and behold, there's something wrong with my two ramsticks. Guess I should never assume stuff like I did!

Thanks for the reply all the same, CMH.

 

[CMH]

Lawl. Why didn't I think its the RAM.... Should've known, bad RAM causes BSODs all the time...

A momentary memory lapse

 

[laughable]

Just as a sidenote, I don't suppose there's a way to stop my computer from automatically restarting from BSOD's?