CPU Shutsdown for no reason!!!!

Okay guildwars seems to be a great game but it's kind of annoying when everytime you play somewhere through the middle of a mission my pc just completely powers down.. it's not a heating issue although my cpu temp reads 74degrees celcius, after the shutdown I can restart my pc fine and run anything else without any crashes but for some reason GW's always causes my pc to shutdown, can anyone offer any ideas as to why this is happening? I run many other 3d games just fine but GW's and Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic are the 2 games that cause my pc to just give up.. this is rather frustrating as I know a fair deal about pc's but this has me completely stumped I'll post my specs below...


Asus P4P800S motherboard
Intel 2.6ghz processor
512k ddr400 ram
Ati Radeon 9200SE REX
Maxtor 120gb HD, 7200rpm
OS/Windows XP Professional

Please help!

Dude, 74 degrees celcius is frickin hot. Thermal threshold on P4's is 75 degrees C. Did you install any THIM, or at least use the thermal pad that came on the heatsink?

Sorry for this quick post, but welcome to the club

I'm not sure what THIM is I know a lot about software but not hardware, how do I reduce the temp? should I maybe look at replacing the cpu fan?

THIM is short for Thermal Interface Material. On lower end heatsinks, its that pink or gray stuff at the bottom of your CPU's heatsink, on high end stuff its either included in a package of white goo or they assume you're going to use high end quality stuff like Arctic Silver 5. The stock Intel Fan should be fine, but you might want to review how you actually installed it, and I suggest cleaning off the old stuff with Isopropyl Alchohol, or Arctic Silver's new stuff called ArctiClean. I actually just bought a package of the stuff yesterday, and I can say ArctiClean makes it easy to clean, and it was only $5. After you cleaned off all of the old THIM on your CPU and Heatsink, REAPPLY A FRESH DAB of THIM (you should always do this whenever you take off your heatsink off of the CPU) As for Arctic Silver products and how-to's, go to:

http://www.arcticsilver.com

And look around the internet on how to install P4 coolers - I'm an AMD guy so I only vaguely know how to install one.

Ohyeah, as for your case, do you have at least one exhaust fan (excluding the power supply's fan)?

You may also want to check the fans on your PC overall. Once a fan goes, things get real warm real fast.

Installing additional cooling fans always helps.

Azrakel Dreik
Guildmaster
The Shroud of the Setting Sun

The Way of the Warrior is the Path of Shadows…
The gift to the warrior is to see the Unseen….
The spirit of the warrior strikes in a single moment…
The Destiny of the Warrior is balance in all things…
When balance is lost the reckoning awaits…

This is the code of the Shroud of the Setting Sun…

First, the normal temperature for a CPU is around 20°c to 40°c... If it goes over 60°c then its over heating and ur gonna get hardware problems, and most likely if it goes to 74°c its prob gonna fry... go buy more fans b4 u use ur computer again, unless you want to have to get a new one altogether!
and when u said 512k ddr400 ram, im thinking u mean 512mb ddr400 ram right? cuz with only 512k u wouldnt be able to run anything... let alone get past boot

For an overclocker/cooling enthusiast 20C ro 40C is sexcellent. But I'm a pretty heavy overclocker, (AMD AXP 2500+ OC' to 2331mhz (222FSB x 10.5 Multiplyer), run between 42C-50C with no problems, and Prime95 stable for 6 hours. I could probably go longer, but to save on electricity, my apartment's thermostat never drops below 78F. Gotta save money for computer parts somehow . Anyway, for regular use, anything below 55C is fine. If you're trying to achieve 20C-40C range, expect to pay for an extravagant cooling system.

As for your MoBo/CPU overheating, ASUS has a built in feature that when it detects that your CPU is about to overheat, it'll throttle the CPU back, or shut it down all together.

Okay I contacted a local pc store and they said to try cleaning the fan simply so I did that my vacuum actually has an attachment that are cpu friendly so I used that blew out all the dust and debree and now I'm running around 50degrees which is far better then 74 obviously lol, the fan I have is not a stock intel fan but rather a cheaper version of it, it's running around 3500rpm's is that about right? I have no probs paying 20-30 bucks for a better fan if needed, as far as external fans my case has 4 in total so external heating should not be the problem, I have 1 side fan that sucks in air, the main power supply fan blowing out and 2 other fans also located at the back blowing out.. I'm pretty sure this case was designed for an AMD so cooling should not fall on the case, but my processor worries me when I purchased the pc the processor had a bent pin, they managed to fix the pin and get the processor installed is it possible that if the pin is still out of line a bit it could cause the processor to overheat? these heating issues are all new to me lol as I've had this pc for over a year with no problems so with that said I'm assuming it was just the dust causing the problem but another very important thing is... after I cleaned fan and restarted pc it gave me a fan error and went straight to bios, fan was only running 1500rpms but then it slowly cimbed back up to 3500.. does it sound like the fan is dying? btw thanks alot for all the help guys, the responses were quick and plentiful

Oh one last thing sorry guys is there a way to monitor the heat of cpu through windows? my case has no thermometer :P

If you're runny around 50c, then hallelujah! As for the AMD Case, I wouldn't worry about it because AMD and Intel used the ATX formfactor and it shouldn't be an issue. As to monitor the temps, there really isn't any "good" ones, only ones that can give you an Idea about the case temps. I would first check Asus' site to see if they have any software, and if not, use Mother Board Monitor. The last release is kind of old, because it isn't being developed anymore. Watch out though, these monitoring programs are known to misread MoBo Thermal Probes! If you want to truly monitor temperatures, you would be best off buying a 5.25 bay drive that has an LCD or similar display on it.

If the problem continues, the next step is that your PSU could be stressing out due to the so far many posts about how GW seems to suck up a lot of computer power to run. Graphic cards on certain settings will really eat up the juice in some cases, soon as your over the PSU limit, off it goes.

But I'd rather not go there. LoL. Any update on if its still shutting off?

Nope it seems to be working great now since I cleaned the fan and heatsink, I appreciate all the advice though guys and I still may purchase a better fan in the future :P

If you do get another fan, see if its possible to add it to your existing fan rather then simply replacing it. Generally the cooler it runs the better, and besides, it never hurts to have that spare running in case the main goes out

EDIT:: Whoops!! haha I was talking about system fans and this thread is all about the heatsink fan, silly me.

I have only overheated ONCE in the entire time that I have had my computer, and it was playing GW... I overclock my 32mb video card to the max, cuz 32mb just blows some supreme ass, and I also overclocked my AMD XP 1500+ and it now acts like a 2200+... really nice in games and stuff!

hmmm... i smell popcorn... but how can that be? Im in my frikken school library, and you cant have food in here... hmmm... must go investigate!

...
...
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*munch, munch*

hehe, found the popcorn!

If you want to monitor temps though windows, just google MotherBoard Monitor 5.

yeah and if you have no temperature monitors in your case that MMB5 can monitor, you can search your fav computer parts sites for temp monitors that you can wire up in your case wherever you want.

I'd recommend checking airflow too, cable runs, etc, as that can make a big deal as well.