Ok, so, after buying Frontlines I was unimpressed with how poor the nvidia 169 drivers handled the game, and installed the beta driver 174.74?. Anywho, it seemed ok for a couple of days, but this morning whilst playing my system crashed and instantly turned off, and would not turn back on. After 15 minutes of waiting It powered on, but BSOD's and I had to wait another 15 minutes. Frsuatrated I reinstalled windows and everything looked good, except it isn't. While I no longer get any BSOD's on start up, I am simply left with an expensive browser, as running any game on 169 drivers will force it to crash, and any attempt to use the nForce performance panel will also cause it to crash. The crash has no error code, it simply turns the computer off. The system was spiffing until I installed the beta drivers, has it the ****ed the cards physically (removing one or the other does not change the situation)? Does anyone have an idea? Rig in Sig. Thanks
Edit: I just saw your system specs, after posting.. so i had to erase what i wrote.. You definitely have enough power. Are you overclocking anything perhaps?
I was, But I turned OC off to see if it was the issue, no such luck really, swapped the RAM out, yada yada. There is one small thing I've had since I built the rig, and that's the CPU core (q6600) was, and still is reading a tiny 0.86v (@1066 + 1.2v in the bios), I figured I had a dodgey bios reading because surely it wouldn't even boot with that, let alone be stable for 4 months with rigourous gaming. But It's quite a strange one, I figured it was overheating at first, because it just shut off, and the system case was baking (we had a stiflingly hot day actually) but now any driver I try all the way back to 160, just crashes the system. I don't have a spare rig that could take a PCI-E either, which is a bugger.
From what i'm reading in the specs on that CPU 0.85V – 1.5V is it's range so .86V wouldn't be a problem. If things were cooking, then its still possible that something got damaged. Unless you were overclocking your FSB then you're RAM is probably fine. Intel CPU's will slow themself down if they get too hot, so CPU is fine. It may be your GPU or PSU.. which leads us back to square one.. Actually, those couple of days when it was working, was it acting up at all or working like nothing was wrong? When it happened, were there any strange smells coming from the machine? If so, where were they coming from?
Fair enough (@CPU) RAM was indeed fine. Those few days it was working, there was no problem, was playing frontlines for about 12 hours on and off, longest being about 3 and it was fine, then for some reason it just powered down an hour into the game and wouldn't reboot and I'm stuck with the problem I have now. It's narrowed down to either GPU(s) or PSU, I might have to order a new PSU and ebay it if it's not the problem, and repeat/or not, the process with my cards. Unless of course I find some suggestions on the various boards I'm floating around. Thanks for your help btw.
Well, it was the PSU. (Thank the God's, two new 8800's or 9800's would have cost me.. ) Last night it shut down completely and would not power at all, using the Tagan 580 from the PC I built my dad it booted with just one GTX installed, unfortunately he wants it back so I'm ordering an Enermax Glaxay after reading very positive reviews. Not happy with Thermaltake for this as I am completely without my much needed games!!! ¬_¬ I'll see if it can be RMA'd =S
