7 replies to this topic

[Chessur]

Thanks for clicking your way into this amazingly awesome thread!

I have a problem though. My computer shuts itself down while I'm playing Starcraft II. No bluescreen or any other errors shows up, it just completely shuts down, as if I had pushed the power button to turn it off.

I have been in contact with Blizzard support and they gave me some advice but none of it helped. They even told me that in some cases, the Logitech Quickcam application and/or drivers were conflicting with Starcraft II and that caused the computer to shut down for no apparent reason. I found that bull and didn't bother uninistalling my webcam software.

I have been doing some research and a lot of users get the same problem but with other games, and they figured out that it was heat problems, either CPU or GPU, one of those.

Now I have been using an application that a friend told me about, an nVidia program that monitors the temperatures of different parts of the computer.

My GPU kept a temperature of 40-50 degrees celsius, and my CPU at around 50 degrees celsius. Both fans to those are running at 100%. I even got rid of dust and other crap from the fans and the heatsinks to ensure that it would cool the processors to the max.

Problem persists. WAT DO?

Current specs (I suppose these are the only ones needed for troubleshooting):
AMD 64 x2 Dual Core 2.2Ghz
4GB RAM DDR2
nVidia 8400gs 512 MB

I'm getting a new computer soon anyway but it would be interesting to figure this one out for future purposes. Thanks.

[wim DC]

Well if it isn't the heat (you should be able to check warn and shutdown temperatures in the BIOS) Then another option may be that certain parts of your computer don't get enough power.
I've had this issue with my graphix card where the PSU wasn't able to give enough power on the v12 rail.

You don't find the stats of your PSU with software, unless you browse the internet and search for your specific PSU if you know the name.
There's always a sticker on the side with all the information.
How much Voltage your graphics card needs can sometimes be hard to find, but browsing the web should eventually give you the solution.

[Chessur]

My PSU has the power to unleash 420W, if I'm not wrong. I do know that this is really bad but I've been thinking, it's been working great before so why would it mess up now? I'm getting a 650W along with my new computer.

[wim DC]

Maybe your other games weren't so "heavy"?

on this forum ->Nvidia 8400GS Problems - Tech Support Forum
The guy suggests a 550-560W PSU for it. On another site it says minimum 18amps on the 12V rail of the PSU. While playing a game the minimum may/most likely won't be enough so about 20-21 is more appropriate.

The amount of watts he suggests may be higher cause the rest of his system requires more... When i had the problem it wasn't really the watts, more the amount of amps the PSU can output on the 12V rail.
(the minimum for my card was 16V i believe, and that was the maximum my PSU could supply. Didn't work for games. I swapped my nvidea for ati then and it was fixed.)

[Chessur]

I see. Now I know what the problem is though, and PSU's are cheap so I might as well get one for now and buy the rest of the computer next month, oh yeah! I wanna play SC2 without random shutdowns. Thanks for your help as well. I love you.

[wim DC]

If your new computer has a better PSU you could swap the 2 and test starcraft II to be 100¨% sure if that's the cause ;)

Oh yea, A Graphics card that overheats normally keeps on going for a while and you will notice that it's overheating when your screen goes like:

[Chessur]

That looks pretty cool. I mean, I hate WoW, so I'm pretty happy that whoever had that problem with overheating GOT WHAT HE DESERVED!

[Alexander]

@Oxano: T° Max is > 100c on 8400xx on most nvidia cards, 100% fan is normal. 420W/12v = 35A per rail minus junction PLL overhead which is fine, only the age of the PSU, quality of the caps on the graphics chipset, or faulty drivers would crash it. IIRC nvidia driver goes into safemode on failure, so it would be more noticable and easier to detect.