Joining the BlackSoD club

*already posted this in another thread but no one seems to see it ;-)*

First off, hi all! I must say I've been reading this forum since launch and you guys seriously rock!

Ok, I'm posting to say that I too have restart/black screen of death (yes black, as in, the monitor shuts down).

My specs :

P4 2.54 GHz
Asus P4S533-X MoBo v. 1005 beta 004
1 Gig of ram
Soundblaster Audigy
AOpen Aeolus 6600GT v. 71.89
WD 80 Gigs HD
1 DVD-Rom
1 CD-Burner
PSU : Dynex 400W w/ 21A on 12V

I run Guild Wars flawlessly on high settings, 1280x1024, AA 4X, no clipping, no ghosting, no lag.

What usually happens is, after a random amount of play time, either
a. My computer restarts (uncool)
b. Game freezes, can still hear sound, move mouse or talk to friends on ventrilo but, after a minute, monitor shuts down, sounds shuts down, can still hear friends rarely on vent and forced to hard reset.

What I've tried :

- Updating Video drivers
- Changing PSU (had a 300W before)
- Running a temp monitor (in GW : MoBo at approx 45, Video : Don't know, can't monit temp of card in program I have)
- Buying a case fan, pushing air outside the case
- Updating/flashing my mobo's bios
- Verifying the card's cooling system (nothing seems wrong)
- I even runned benchmarks (3d marks) to push my card to the max and it didn't crash

Now, my intentions is to quit work early today and download some more monitoring programs (any suggestions ?) benchmarks (again, suggestions) and any utility to push my specs to the freakin' limits (you guessed it, suggestions ?).

If any of you have any suggestions or commentaries, please feel free! Thanks a lot!

The only thing I can even think of suggesting is that your graphics card is faulty.

Definitely something going on between the graphics card and the monitor here.

It crossed my mind, but I can play CoH, HL2 and CS:S without problems...

EDIT : I'm gonna try Riva Tuner from guru3D to see if their compatibility option between SiS and 6600GT AGP would help...

I had the same problem with a similar spec'ed PC. I've found from various threads on various forums that many people are having the same problem. Seems as if the most common cause is temperature related.

I simply took the side-cover off my case, and my machine no longer crashes.

It's not guaranteed to work for everyone, but it definitely worked for me (as well as many others)

Dynex is a suck@$$ PSU company. You may still have not fixed it.

But before you go buying more, run a solid defrag with a third-party application (I recommend O&O Defrag) and possibly even running System Mechanic to search for unused files, widows and orphans, etc. of old directories and THEN defragging. I'm seeing that as an issue more and more...

Hmmm, you mentioned that you updated your video drivers. Never drivers are by no means the best.

I have the same graphics card as you, so I think that you should give Official Nvidia Forceware 71.24 a try. In my opinion they're the smoothest and most stable graphics drivers around for the 6600GT.

For the Dynex PSU, I suspected as much but was the only available on such short notice.

I'm gonna try your drivers Principa, thanks.

If all else fails, defrag is an option :P