HardwareBanter - View Single Post - Hangs in games w/ P8Z68-V/GEN3

**FolkGT** · March 2nd 12, 05:21 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus

On Fri, 2 Mar 2012 13:35:08 +0000 (UTC), wrote:

Last month I built a new machine with a P8Z68-V/GEN3, running an Intel i5
2500K and 16G of Corsair Vengeance RAM. The video card is an Asus GeForce
GTX 560 DirectCU, and I've got a DLink wifi card in for network. Driving
the thing is an Enermax 625W Liberty PSU, and Windows 7 (64 bit, obviously)
for an OS.

Overall, it's a pretty basic setup, but I'm having crash after crash. It
almost always happens when I'm playing graphic-intensive games, usually
Team Fortress 2 or Lord of the Rings Online. Oddly, it *doesn't* seem to
happen as often in Skyrim, although it does happen. I've also had it hang
once while playing a Youtube video in Chrome.

The crashes manifest as the video/graphics freezing, and the sound will
stutter. This is usually when I'd hit the reset button on the machine.
However, I've noticed that if I leave the machine alone - stuttering sound
and all - it will *sometimes* recover. The currently running game will
close, and I'll be busted out to the desktop. On the Youtube occasion,
the browser remained running but the video area turned green.

Does that sound like the video driver crashing? I'm using the latest nVidia
WHQL drivers.

I've run memtest86+ extensively, and the RAM seems to check out fine. The
PSU has been solid (I carried it over from my old machine) and I've got it
plugged into a UPS; with a single video card (no SLI) and only running a
single 1TB disk I'd think 625W would be enough.

I'm starting to lean toward the video card being at fault, but the
motherboard is newer and the problems started manifesting themselves with
the new machine. Tonight I might try re-arranging the guts to put the
560GTX in a different PCIe slot, just to see if it makes a difference.

Anyone have any other suggestions? It's getting frustrating... I average
one crash per night, after which I'm *usually* fine for the rest of the
evening, but last night I had two crashes in a row... which is a problem,
because I'm frequently main tank in LOTRO.

Sounds like overheating. Since this is a new build, I would suspect the
CPU cooling, but you should check the GPU as well in the event the fan is
borked.