My computer doesnt want me to play games

[MateoTheBold!]

Out of curiosity, how much space is left on the drive that you have OS installed on?

[Ixtab]

No, I dont think its a knock off

342 GB free on me Windows drive.

[Boss Llama]

You may be shorting it on power because of the quad rails on your PSU, or it may simply be underpowered relative to its advertisement. Compare the listings from the CL700B versus, for example, the Corsair GS700 (both advertised as 700 watt PSUs).

CL700B:

VIEW CONTENT:

GS700

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There are two important things to take in to consideration here - wattage, and amperage.

For wattage, the CL700B is marketed as a 700 watt PSU based on the combination of the +3.3V, +5V, and +12V outputs. The GS700 is marketed as 700 watts based only on the 12V output. The 12V output is the one that's important for running graphics cards, and pretty much any other peripheral. As far as your GPU's are concerned, the CL700B is a 570 watt PSU, whereas the GS700 would be 672. While Coolmax's claim isn't untrue, it is deceptive, and they know it. It's a marketing thing.

More important than wattage is amperage. The CL700B has the 12V output divided in to 4 "rails." Three rails handle a maximum of 16A each, and the last handles only 12A. In a multi-rail supply, it is important to balance the load between all the different rails, as a single one will not be able to handle everything in a system. The GS700 has just a single 12V rail, handling 56A, so no balancing is necessary. It's entirely possible that even if balanced out, 16A isn't enough to run your GPUs, which means they could be starving for power, even if the wattage is fine. My old 8800GT asks for 26 amps, while my GTX470 says it needs 38A. I don't know the amp requirements on your cards, but doubly ensure you are not trying to run one of the cards off +12V number 4, the 12A rail. That one is the weakest, and should be left for other things, like optical drives and such. If you still have the original boxes they came in, it'll say in the requirements how many amps are needed, or if you post what you have I'm sure we can find it.

Full disclosure: I'm no expert on electricity or power supplies, but this is what I've learned from building my own computers for a decade or so. After burning through 3 lower end PSUs in about 2 years, I did some research and learned the above. Once I learned how to read the output charts and used the information I posted above, I never again had a PSU go out. I used a Corsair PSU as my "good" example here for the simple reason that I love them and have them in all my computers, and the fact that every one of them has a single 12V rail, making life way easier when it comes to cabling stuff. Out of all the pieces in a computer, the PSU is the one thing that corners should absolutely not be cut on. Without it, not a single other thing will work.

[Ixtab]

So, I thought I may have had the issue fixed with drivers... Ran furmark for a half our without issue, and played APB for hours just fine. But it did end up rebooting my comp after a while again. It seems like after that first reboot, it starts happening more frequently again too.

Not sure what is happening... It may still be power, I guess, but the drivers fixing it temporarily have me a bit skeptical about it.

[One_Medic_Army]

If your computer's rebooting itself, have you checked your temperatures?
That's the most common cause I know of for a computer rebooting itself, and it getting worse after first occurrence.

[edit] I see you're monitoring the temps (through software, I assume), but have you physically touched your heatsink or mobo to check that those temps are accurate?

[Checkm8]

Have you angered the PC hardware gods? If so, I'd suggest sacrificing some other piece of harware. This may appease the bad voodoo that has been hexing your machine.

[MrBlah]

There could be an unintended path of current on one of your boards(motherboard or video) that sends current to the reset circuit when a certain arrangement of switched goes off, namely those that get there from certain games.

Just a thought, not truly likely, but it follows logic.

[Ixtab]

So, I gave up for a while, and decided to just not play APB or BC2, at least for a while.

My computer did not like this, it seems, as she now has reset herself during some other games. This is getting quite frustrating, and it would be nice to actually figure out what is happening.

I recently reinstalled windows, and I also moved my games to another hard drive not too long ago. That leaves me with two possibilities that I can think of: Motherboard or Power Supply. Neither of those options I can really do anything about, and I cant even test them. I am hoping it isnt the motherboard, as it is new (actually, the power supply is pretty new too).
I am a bit skeptical as t the power supply, as everything was working fine before, and I took out one vid card, and disconnected two hard drives and a fan to cut back on power and see if it makes a difference.... it did not.

So, if anyone has any other ideas of what I can try, I would love to hear them.

[One_Medic_Army]

Unfortunately motherboards have a reasonably high failure rate for a consumer product.
It's quite possible you have a fault in yours, apart from a diagnostic program the only way I know to test is to swap your components 1 by 1 and eliminate everything that's not the issue.
Have you tried removing the RAM sticks 1 at a time yet to see if that helps? Have you tried running without each individual video card? (for that matter make sure you check both PCIe slots).
Motherboard and CPU are the hardest to test, and if you narrow it that far may as well just replace both if the CPU isn't in the last 2 generations or so.

[Ixtab]

So, I was playing Neverwinter Nigths 2, and my computer did it again.... This got me into troubleshooting the issue yet again because nwn2 is older now and shouldnt be as much of a problem to run.

So, one thing of not that I am seeing now is that my GPU usage is hitting 99% while in game. I am using evga precision to monitor usage ant temps. NWN2 really should not be that much of a strain on the vid card, so anyone have an idea as to what could be causing that?

Oh, and I did try a few different drivers already, but who knows, maybe there is one specific driver that'll help...

Edit - The GPU usage shoots up as soon as I go ingame, even with it paused and zoomed in... nothing is going on onscreen at all.

[Clay Pigeon]

Unless you have vsync on, the gpu will automatically max out to get you the most fps possible.

[Ixtab]

That doesnt seem right... sitting in the main menu souldnt max out gpu usage right away. also windowed/full screen and vsync on/off, nothing matters.. its always maxed as soon as I start up the game.

[CastleDoctrine]

I had a similar issue with high CPU usage (99% ALL THE TIME) a few months back. I tried different drivers left and right to no avail. It turned out to be my antivirus (AVG 2011 Free). Uninstalled it, installed alternative, fixed. Don't know if that's relevant to your problem though.

Also, I was getting BSOD's almost every time I used flash video (such as on YouTube) and EVERY TIME I tried to play a DVD movie in my CD/DVD drive. Rolled back my nVidia driver and hooray.

[Ixtab]

So yeah, still no luck, and the issue is getting pretty strange. Like I mentioned, sitting in the menu for NWN2 brings my GPU usage to 99 or 100% and it will reset my computer after playing for a bit, but yet I can play waaaay more intensive games without any issues, and with the GPU usage not going above 70% and mainly hovering around 50-60%.
This is what makes me wonder if it really is a hardware issue, because if it was, shouldnt it happen with everything?

[Clay Pigeon]

are you using the latest drivers for your video card? If so, rollback. If not, update.