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Losbullitt
4 Posts
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7724
July 25th, 2009 00:00
XPS 630 issues
Hello.
I recently purchased an XPS 630 from Dell.
So here's my problem.
My setup is:
E8500 @ 3.16ghz, Nvidia 285 GTX @ 1024mb, 4gb ram, Windows Home x64, super-ultra-cool-amazingly loud cpu fan
I play wow and my computer crashes. When it doesn't crash, my frame rates bounce from 20-180, even with wow settings and card settings (through Nvidia control panel) on high (AA/AF on max, with wow tech forums suggesting disabling several features like AA transparency and such). At first I thought it was just wow and the game being largely cpu programmed and blizzard unable to make the 200 series model cards up to snuff. However, lately my desktop has been crashing outside of wow. Its crashed on Fallout 3 (max settings, mid 30+ framerates), just browsing the web and a few times would start up only to die before windows began loading. I checked the bios and made sure that everything was stock (I played with the overclocking options a bit, really just disabling speedstep and upping the FSB, from 1333 to 1460, but set it back to normal after the system was unstable).
Other than what was mentioned, I have not tampered with voltage or anything else. Suggestions? Advice? Should I just have a 2k paperweight on my desk?
Thanks in advance.
Los
151
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Posted July 28th, 2009 09:00
This is odd.
I finally downloaded a program that monitored how hot my gpu/cpu ran during idle and load while being put on hold several times by dell customer support.
When I ran the program after a restart, I found that my cpu was at 120C and stayed around that mark for a few minutes before shutting off. If there was a load, I wasn't aware of one. After a cold start, the processor ran at 50+ before ramping up to 70-80 under load but continued to rise steadily before shutting off again.
Dell is replacing my motherboard. Should we be looking at the processor as well?
151
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Posted July 28th, 2009 11:00
Maybe not. When they replace the motherboard, make sure they spread the CPU thermal grease well on both the CPU and the CPU shroud. Make sure the CPU shroud screws are tight. Also, when they disassemble it the first time, look at the spread of the original thermal grease and tell us what it looks like.
DELL-Chris M (old account)
#IWork4Dell
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Posted July 31st, 2009 15:00
Chris,
The tech was here today and I saw him pop everything open. With the original motherboard, the grease spread was about even. Everything was snug and seemed to be ok. He switched out the watercooled fan system that sits atop the processor and we started the computer. It started overheating, quickly rising to 100C+ before I shut it down. He replaced the motherboard and now everything seems to be ok, minus the updated bios (1.0.12).
I did notice that on the old motherboard, my voltage was consistently around 1.15-1.18. Now my voltage sits between 1.18 - 1.2v. Would an under-volted CPU act up like that?
dcgtls
2 Intern
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940 Posts
151
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Posted July 25th, 2009 13:00
I have found that problems like these usualy turn out to be a driver problem or a corrupt system file. First thing to try would be to get on Nvidia.com and download the newest driver for your card and see if that helps any. If that does not help then I would back up all of my data and reinstall windows and all drivers. Then I would reinstall one application/game at a time and test it then then next application/game and so-on.
On another note you should be doing basic maint. on your computer on a regular basis ie: Degfrag, Virus/spyware scans, making sure that all windows updates are done, check for newer drivers and bios files.