Crashes....Please....

[thestalkmore]

Long and short of it, my video freezes and I get intermittent sound loops. Crashes appear to be completely random (I've gone 2 days without one and then had 2 in 15 minutes, etc). Here are specs:

2.4 ghz quad core intel
4 GB ram
150 GB 10000 RPM raptor
750 GB Seagate
2 8800 GTX's in SLI
Asus SLI mobo
Sony DVD drive
Soundblaster Fatal1ty Professional Series Sound Card.

Thus far I have tried:
Brand new cooling case to lower temperatures.
Removing nVidia firewall.
Reinstalling current drivers 2000 times.

Any ideas...? I'm about at wits' end here and the most frustrating part is I have no idea what's wrong. I am currently trying operating with SLI disabled (about 45 mins in) but that won't be conclusive unless I don't crash for a few days. Hope it isn't a faulty component.....

[Sonomaa]

is this in FFXI? cause Ive heard FFXI fucks up with SLI running, you can only run it single card

[viperlasson]

that rig must suck up alot of power. What kind of power supply you got running? Are you running 64bit os or 32bit? Maybe faulty ram? Run memtest for a while and see if any errors come up.

[Shuemue]

Possibly worth trying these, I've heard good things about them.

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

[Vertabreaker]

What are your temps at and what kind of cooling are you using?

[thestalkmore]

Viper: 850W Power supply.
Sonomaa: I'd agree but I have experienced crashes in CS too.
Shuemue: Have had bad experiences with Omega drivers.
Vertabreaker: I'm almost 100% confident it isn't a temperature issue.

http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/108/untitled1fw5.jpg

[viperlasson]

Hmm... Try the RAM tester memtest86+. Let it run for a while and see if any errors come up because you certainly have enough power there, 850w .

http://www.memtest.org/

edit: Did this just start happening recently? Did you install anything that might be causing this? Maybe a bad windows installation (happened to me before, system would lock up for 2mins after closing any program)


Reformat!

[Sigi]

That GPU is running a bit warm for comfort. You might want to see if it has adequate cooling on it. Bar that, try a known good video card. I had issues with my system with random lockups and shutdowns, turned out the video card had a nice little blown resistor

[Amele]

is this in FFXI? cause Ive heard FFXI fucks up with SLI running, you can only run it single card

I've actually had no issues with SLI and FFXI, although I'm using 7800's and not 8800's (machine is a little older).

SLI is pretty touchy in general though, honestly.

[Avanarius]

If it's only in games and doesn't cause a BSOD I recommend trying various different drivers to isolate the issue...Also keep it in single gpu mode until you solve the problem...It doesn't sound like a memory problem to me though I assume you're running 64bit with 4gb of ram....

There is nothing wrong with those 8800 temperatures, 8800's run hot but safe.

[Sigi]

147.2 F and 138.2 F is safe?

That's borderline fried electronics level heat

[Vertabreaker]

Ya dude, those GPUs are running a little hotter then they should be in a rig like yours. Has this crashing been happening out of SLi as well? If so, check your SLi bridge.

[Avanarius]

147.2 F and 138.2 F is safe?

That's borderline fried electronics level heat

You are wrong, an 8800 can easily sustain heat up to and beyond 80 degrees. Celsius 90+ is where I would start to worry though...

If you do some research you will find the standard idle temperature for an 8800 is 60-65 Celsius.

[thestalkmore]

Just crashed after 19 hours with SLI disabled...GGGGG.

According to Nvidia and SLI-Zone forums, my temps are plenty low.

[Avanarius]

I don't recall you saying what operating system you were running

[thestalkmore]

XP Professional 32 Bit

[Sigi]

What concerns me is that heat travels... and if there is that large a source of heat in a system near to a more heat-sensitive board... well, the word of the day is "extra-crispy"

Still, that's freakish that Nvidia released a board that runs so hot... that's REALLY shoddy engineering in my opinion.

[Robert]

4 GB RAM seems very ambiguous, as does Asus SLI mobo--it wouldn't happen to be Asus StrikerExtreme would it? and what brand is your RAM? I have an Asus SLI mobo as well and I went through 5 sets of RAM before Corsair XMS2 worked, exact system stats as you except 2 7950GTs, 650W power supply and 1 TB Hitachi

[Amele]

What concerns me is that heat travels... and if there is that large a source of heat in a system near to a more heat-sensitive board... well, the word of the day is "extra-crispy"

Still, that's freakish that Nvidia released a board that runs so hot... that's REALLY shoddy engineering in my opinion.

pretty much every component in a PC these days is rated to 80-90C minimum, remember too - that temp read-out is from *inside* the die, so there's several layers of thermal transfer / heat sink / fan / open-space between that temp and any non-nvidia component.

we've taken some embedded components (and cheaper made than a quality gpu would be) up to 180C without fatal failure in our HALT chamber recently, 65C is nothing, lol.

[Lost]

Um... How come all your voltages are in red?