Z68X-UD3-B3 random game reboots, please help!

[Wiggy]

Hi there,
I bought my board about 2 months ago and haven't really had any issues, great new system. The problem is that randomly during some games the computer will just reboot itself. The interesting part is that it seems to only happen during random games as well. For example, I can play WoW, Starcraft, Splinter Cell, Dirt 3, just to name a few that I've tested. But when I play a few certain games after about 30 mins to an hour, it just restarts itself, The Witcher, Medal of Honor, Battlefield:BC2.

Any help is really appreciated, I have also watched the temps thinking it was that and the CPU never goes over 30c and the system usually sits around 43c and goes up to about 47c when playing games. I'm not sure if the system temp is perhaps to high but it doesnt seem to bad of a number.

Z68X-UD3-B3
i-2500K
16gbs of ram gskill ddr3 1600
H70 cpu cooler
geforce gtx 560ti

[Gloup_Gloup]

  Hi Wiggy,

So, I am very busy and tired now.

I suggest to you, just check a temp and other parameters about your hardware. In a first Time.
You have a posibility to post any others informations for finds a solution, by any other forum members .
Go to link here :
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,6367.msg50106.html#msg50106

So Now I go to Logoff. Scuse me.

Gloup_Gloup.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi there,
I bought my board about 2 months ago and haven't really had any issues, great new system. The problem is that randomly during some games the computer will just reboot itself. The interesting part is that it seems to only happen during random games as well. For example, I can play WoW, Starcraft, Splinter Cell, Dirt 3, just to name a few that I've tested. But when I play a few certain games after about 30 mins to an hour, it just restarts itself, The Witcher, Medal of Honor, Battlefield:BC2.

Any help is really appreciated, I have also watched the temps thinking it was that and the CPU never goes over 30c and the system usually sits around 43c and goes up to about 47c when playing games. I'm not sure if the system temp is perhaps to high but it doesnt seem to bad of a number.

Z68X-UD3-B3
i-2500K
16gbs of ram gskill ddr3 1600
H70 cpu cooler
geforce gtx 560ti

Hi and welcome.

You haven't mentioned what PSU you are currently using but that of course is a primary contender for the cause of your problem.  The other thing you did say is that your motherboard tempertures go up to 47C when playing somer of these games, this is too high really and should be kept below 40C according to Intel. I would suggest that you have a look at your case cooling and maybe increase the performance of that.

[yayo]

Latest NVIDIA GPU drivers - 280.26 WHQL are unstable, causing piles of crashes and overheating the GPU, if you have those installed try reverting back to older drivers.

EDIT
Same for the 280.19 BETA

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and thanks for sharing that information. It makes you wonder how much testing goes into these updates before release!

[Gloup_Gloup]

Latest NVIDIA GPU drivers - 280.26 WHQL are unstable, causing piles of crashes and overheating the GPU, if you have those installed try reverting back to older drivers.

EDIT
Same for the 280.19 BETA

Hi,  

Is this the case for the x64 version or 32 bit?
All games in general or only certain games?
In positionof overclocking or stock.

Tanks for details.
Have you another info source?

EDIT : I find this Topic :
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=206522&st=380

Gloup_Gloup

[Wiggy]

Hey,
thanks for all the responses guys. I'm here at work but I will check all that when I get home. Off the top of my head, I know I have an OCZ 1000watt PSU. I have pretty good case cooling, or so I thought. Again off the top of my head I have a big one in the front, 2 big ones on top pushing in and then i have 2 on the back pulling out, as well as the H70's fans pulling out the back through the cooling. Is there anything that would perhaps help lower the temps more than just maybe better fans or fan placement? I was thinking maybe a 3rd party northbridge heatsink. Also is there a test to see if my psu is bad? i mean besides just swapping and seeing?

I'm pretty sure I do have those drivers as well for my GPU, so i will look into that.

Oh, and i have 64 bit windows 7, everything is running stock, no OC. The games are random which ones crash it seems, some games run just fine forever, others run for about an hour then it just reboots.

[Wiggy]

Well I was able to lower some of the temps. I fixed some of the pieces so the airflow is better, the system is atleast sitting idle at 40c. what i did find out though is that my GPU seems to be running waaaay hot for idle temps. It's running about 61c idle and from what I have found online most of these cards run about 30c idle.... which obviously isnt good :S

I'm not sure what else to do for cooling, I opened up basically every spot available and removed some cords that were blocking the front fan. I mean, the GPU running that hot shouldnt be simply case cooling, it almost sounds like a bad card? what do you guys think

[yayo]

I have a MSI GeForce GTX 560 1GB Twin Frozr II OC and the GPU temp idles at 30-35 degrees centigrade, using    the 275.33 WHQL drivers. I installed the latest beta drivers a week or so ago and my display would just go black for a couple seconds when clicking a link in my internet browser. Since updating GPU drivers was the last change I made to my pc before these symptoms started to occur I simpy reverted back to 275.33 WHQL and haven't had a problem since. That's why I didn't bother to investigate the issue further, but checking some gaming forums I read about crashes and GPU overheating supposedly caused by 280.26 WHQL drivers. What drivers do you have and if you have the newest have you tried reverting back to 275.33 WHQL?
Also, have you checked the GPU fan speed? 

[Dark Mantis]

Wiggy

You seem to have your fans setup a bit weird to be honest. The top ones should be exhaust as hot air by nature rises so it should be taken out here. The front should be an intake along with at least one other fan at the bottom somewhere. You have got the H70 as exhaust at the top rear as well. Ideally you should try and arrange it so that you have a slight positive pressure inside as this helps to stop the build up of dust.

[Wiggy]

yayo: I had heard about the problems with the new drivers so ya I'm still using the 275.33 drivers for this card. I haven't checked the fan speed yet, I'm at work again so I'll have to check when I get home.

Dark Mantis: Ya that makes sense, I was talking with some of the guys at work and I might have my radiator in a bad place too in my case so when I get home I'm going to try and move alot of that stuff around and set the fans in different places and what not, hopefully it will help. Also, the guys at work think it's a PSU issue since its not BSOD'ing it simply just resets itself so there might be something specific to power that is just having it shut off. I'm going to try and get another psu and swap it out and see what that does but I will keep you updated.

Thanks for all the help still guys, I really appreciate it

[Dark Mantis]

No problem Wiggy. Good luck and keep the forum updated.

[Wiggy]

Hey,
still at work but just wanted to update. So I moved the fans around and did some other things to help with cooling and it lowered my gpu settings about 8c atleast but the system temp is still roughly running about 45c. I ran some games again to test and they are still just rebooting... The odd part is that it doesnt put anything in the event log or dump file or anything, there is no info about the restart

This weekend I am planning to run some stress tests and some benchmarks to see if i can narrow down what piece it is. Do you think the reason it would simply restart like that would be the psu though? the fact that it doesnt BSOD or anything almost makes me think its some sort of psu issue because simply the power is just going out. I'm not sure though and hopefully I'll be able to test it out. I just wanted to know waht you guys think if that might be the issue or if you have seen that before.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi Wiggy

I would have to agree especially with the lackage of BSOD or dumps it would seem that the PSU is jusyt getting overloaded and cutting out only to cool down and restart.

Are you now sure that you have an OCZ 1000W PSU ? Even so I would suiggest trying to borrow one of a friend or something just to test with. Make sure that it is at least 650W and a good make like Seasonic, Corsair, Gigabyte, Enermax, Thermaltake etc.

[Wiggy]

Hey, it turns out it is an ULTRA X3 1000w PSU, I apologize. I still believe it might be the power supply but I finally got a bluescreen I took out 2 sticks of my ram to see and it finally bluescreened and I have a minidump file, I attached it below if you guys could help me out. I wasn't really able to find out what the hal.dll file was or I might just be reading the file wrong cause I've honestly never had to read one

Also though, I ran a memtest on the RAM and it came back with errors... so it looks like my RAM is bad and I will be replacing that but I still want to test the PSU and find out exactly what the dump file says, just to make sure I don't have other issues as well. Thanks Dark, your a great help!