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    The PC (Personal Computer) is a highly configurable and upgradable gaming platform that, among home systems, sports the widest variety of control methods, largest library of games, and cutting edge graphics and sound capabilities.

    Testing Hardware

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    Tim_svlad

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    #1  Edited By Tim_svlad

    Hey guys. I had a question about testing hardware. For a good while now, I've had all my PC games crash the computer to reboot whenever I'll play them. I don't believe this is a driver or software issue, as I've reformated multiple times (over the course of almost 2 years now) to try and fix the issue without any success. I've ran memtest to check if my ram was good and I had no error. How do I go about checking other components?   
     
    Note: My computer has never crashed while not running games. 
     
    Here are my specs, although I'm not sure it is needed. P5B Deluxe Motherboard, Core 2 Duo 6400 @ 2.13, 2gb of DDR2 RAM, and a Radeon X1950X with 512 mb, and a 750 watt power supply. This computer was built in late 2006. I've only changed 1 thing, and that was a 7900GT NVidia card that failed. 

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    Amit

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    #2  Edited By Amit

    Alot of things could be crashing your pc :
    * Bad Powersupply ... what kind of power supply unit are using ?
    *GPU overheating ... 
    *GPU memory corruption 
    * CPU overheating 
    *Bad Case of motherboard 

    Here are few test i would recommend running :
     
    Run Prime95, fully stress all cores of your CPU. Run Prime95. 
    Run OCCT , it fully stress test your GPU. Run it for 30mins. http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika/index.php?Download
     
    I would recommend you do a simple upgrade : 
    Windows 7 
    4GB DDR2 Ram
    Get a ATI 4850 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150482

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    Tim_svlad

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    #3  Edited By Tim_svlad

    Thanks for the suggestions, working through them right now. How would I test if I have a bad PSU?

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    overbyte

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    #4  Edited By overbyte
    @tim_svlad said:
    Thanks for the suggestions, working through them right now. How would I test if I have a bad PSU?
    You can monitor the stability of the voltage rails if they're close to the intended output. My old PC would randomly hang and lock up minutes after I booted into Windows especially when starting a game, so booted up into the BIOS and saw that the 12V rail was delivering not enough voltage. Basically replaced the PSU and the hanging issues were gone after that.
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    TheKeyboardDemon

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    #5  Edited By TheKeyboardDemon

    You could also just open it up and blow out all of the dust, if you've not done this in the last few years then that might be causing heat issues which aren't a problem under normal circumstances but start to be when the PC is under load.

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