This is the machine that is causing me trouble, info on whats going on is towards the bottom.
So, I just recently took the spoils from a couple years of hard work and decided I was going to buy myself a decent computer instead of build it for once. Now I did not go crazy, but I did spend about 900 dollars on a new computer.
The Mobo is a cm6870
Cpu is an intel i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40Ghz
16 Gigs of solid Ram, no idea the type atm
and about 1.7tb of hard drive (the weak link i suspect)
some crappy onboard Vid Card
some 300-350 watt PSU
Small Case
Anyway, I didn't intend to leave any of the lesser parts, minus the hard drive, slowing down my (in my eyes), beastly machine, So I switched out the PSU for a more powerful one capable of running the GTX 560 I put into the machine. Honestly there was barely room to shoehorn everything into the case and I am somewhat concerned with how tightly everything had to be routed to avoid issues. (still not sure the power for the gfx card is firmly seated for example). However my beast was up and running.
Tragedy strikes. The machine runs blistering fast, appears to laugh at anything that gets thrown at it, but I have run into issues multiple times, the last one has been repeatable. When running shogun 2 total war on high with all the bells and whistles, the game does not slow down or seem to have serious issues with the detail or number of units on screen, however, after about 5 to 10 minutes into my now glorious hi-rez battle my computer screen goes black for a moment (while music continues to play and sounds pour forth from the speakers, and then, it BSOD's on me. I suspect that there is either a physical interuption of power to the video card, or some other issue.
I have figured out how to find the mini-dump and some other temp file describing the problem but am stumped as to how to proceed from here. If anyone has ideas wade right in as this is more than just disappointing, it's a tad depressing.
Posts
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-bsod.html
Once you find the error you can google it for more info.
But the following:
running shogun 2 total war on high with all the bells and whistles
some crappy onboard Vid Card
Small Case
makes me think you have a heat problem. How can you run Shogun 2 on high with onboard video?
You can use speedfan to monitor and log temps and replicate the problem to see if it's heat.
Because he crammed a GTX560 into the case.
is exactly describing what happens when your overheating, it's either the video card or the cpu, but whichever it is is hitting it's temperature max and downclocking severely to save itself from destruction, which leads to system instability and a bsod.
go get speedfan or a similar temp monitoring program and run it with logging enabled, than play shogun until it crashes again. I bet you'll find something hitting 90-100C.
Wow, reading comprehension. Not sure why he didn't list his actual specs in that list...
the issue I am running into however is card size. The card is long enough that when the case is on, there is little to no exchange of airflow between the top and bottom of the case, and I dont know that a simple fan will help that. if anyone has brilliant ideas let me know, I will be working on options.
maybe we could give some suggestions on how to route cables, or where to stick an extra fan to see if the running temp can be lowered a bit.