Comp crash issue

[Barrel Bomber]

my computer crashes about ever hour while playing tf2(and other games) , it gets a bunch of little black squares on in ... it kinda looks like a checker board .... did a virus scan and came up with 2 trojans (deleted) but has lead to no improvement...ive considered overheating but it doesnt seem to be running to hot... does any1 have any sujestions or ideas...ty

[Clay Pigeon]

sounds like your graphics card is overheating.

[Barrel Bomber]

http://www.evga.com/articles/403.asp
the sc issue ... think i could underclock it without losing to much capability?
and if so how?

[Clay Pigeon]

I would start by turning up the fanspeed before I underclocked.

I have to manually turn up the fanspeed on my 8800gts to 70 percent if I want to play any 3d games for a long period of time. If I leave it on auto control it overheats eventually.

[Barrel Bomber]

cleaned most of dust from case and upped fan speed from 35% to 100% and still crashing... sadface

[Clay Pigeon]

did you clean the dust from the graphic card's heatsink as well?

[dredfox]

Forgive me, this will sound a bit dumb, but it is worth looking at. Check that the heatsink is still held on tightly. I repaired one PC that had a chipset heatsink held on by one clip. It looked like it was on tightly, but a gap had grown where the thermal compound had dried out. The computer would work properly for about 30 minutes before needing a 20 minute cool down.

[spm97]

[quote="Barrel Bomber";p="178234"]my computer crashes about ever hour while playing tf2(and other games) , it gets a bunch of little black squares on in ... it kinda looks like a checker board .... did a virus scan and came up with 2 trojans (deleted) but has lead to no improvement...ive considered overheating but it doesnt seem to be running to hot... does any1 have any sujestions or ideas...ty[/quote]


The "black squares" is a classic sign of video card overheating, or a failing chipset. As suggested here, clean the dust out of it is step 1.

Then, make sure you have good airflow to the video card. If you have a card installed right next to it, move that card to another slot.

Also, if you are lucky enough to have a motherboard with multiple slots that will support your video card, try a different slot.

Spam

[Araris]

I keep both my video cards at 61% fan speed to prevent any overheating but even when they do overheat (only if I run Crysis for 3+ hours) I've never seen the checkboard or anything else like that. Usually the computer just shuts off. I'd check your chipset.

Worst case scenario: You'd need to remove the GPU heatsink and reapply the thermal compound. IF your video card is anything besides an EVGA you'll void your warranty (that's why I only buy EVGA).