Troubleshooting: PC suddenly shuts down not because of overheating

[polarpandabear]

Hello Everyone!

I had a consistent problem with my one year old PC. it randomly shuts down and I would like to clarify and confident enough that overheating in my GPU is not the cause of shutting down. I'm still trying my best (until now) to have solutions.

My PC brief specs:
AMD Athlon II x2 3.0ghz (not OC)
Powercolor Radeon HD 7850 fling force
Simple MSI motherboard
Kingston 2gb ddr3 memory
500w thermaltake PSU

Solutions that I had made:
1. cleaning my PC
2. replaced thermal compound on CPU and GPU
3. updated device drivers
4. updated BIOS
5. check airflow

Any solutions? thanks :D

[rubberman]

How many and what type of disc drives are you running? Devices that are USB powered? Other cards besides the video?

FWIW, the Radeon 7850 draws approximately 300 watts when not at idle or just doing simple desktop stuff (provided your system can engage with the 7850's low-power control system). With everything else, your power supply may be the culprit here. Try replacing it with a 750W unit. Thermaltake units are, AFAIK, perfectly fine supplies, but I think that 500W is a bit weak for your needs. I have seen more systems fail from inadequate PS units than just about anything else, other than RAM or CPU overheating.

[polarpandabear]

thanks rubberman for reply :D

I forgot to tell that I have 2 HDD and 1 combo drive. I recently installed 2 generic 80mm fans.

I also suspected that PS is the main problem. the average temp of my CPU and GPU ranges between 40 - 50C.

I am a 3D artist with a little knowledge on troubleshooting and I do a lot of rendering in my machine. the worst is 7 days straight using mental ray (which computations only occur in CPU) but the problem starts when it comes on playing games like league of legends. I'm currently using a regular thermaltake 500W.

too bad I can't search for any whitepaper or other stuff about my VC.

please enlightened me on the perks of having low wattage on my machine. I don't know the consequences on having that problem

I would also like to ask if this problem will also affect the health and performance of the other parts of the machine.

Thanks

[DistantGalaxy]

Did the problem arise before or after installing the fans?

If you haven't tried already, install them so that one fan expels air while the other draws air in. This should increase airflow through the case. If both fans are expelling air it might cause a reduction of pressure inside the case and prevent the PSU fan from working effectively.

[polarpandabear]

The problem Already arise before I installed the fans. My set up before was an open case to watch the temp of my vcard. But the frequency of shutting down was not worse than I am experiencing today. I am just using google chrome and when I stream a video on youtube it shuts off Which I could do before.
Btw I already tried to flip the other Fan still it crashes

[rubberman]

As we both suspect, your 500W PS is not adequate, which assumption is reinforced with your newer comments about it failing when game playing (forces the GPU into high-power mode). Get a 750 or 1000W PS and see if that fixes the problem. Myself, for my workstation I always go for the higher capability PS (1000W). In this case, more is better. It costs only incrementally more, but it will cover all reasonable power requirements without problems.

[polarpandabear]

I have already temporary solutions as I earn enough monry to buy new PS. I need to unmount secondary disk drives and cd drive. I'm hoping thwt would help. i would like to ask if the other parts are still fine in this situwation.

[rubberman]

They should be. YOu need to reduce the current draw. You need to disconnect the secondary disk drives and cd drive, including the power plug. IE, shut down the system, unplug the drive(s), and then restart the system. Whether this works or not will depend upon the power draw of the CPU, which can be significant. I haven't checked, but if it is over 100W then you may still have issues when the video is operating at max.