niceguyrichy

OK, I don't have the best gaming system by a long way, I mostly use it for internet access, but recently whenever I try to play any game at any res. after about 2 minutes the BIOS start to beep at me. One beep every second and a half or so.
I have : P4 2.8G, 2*256 DDR400, ATi 9600 Pro, Gigabyte mobo, 160GB disc, 380W Truepower PSU, all inside an Antec Sonata with 2 120mm system fans.
I know its not the CPU cooler, I've tried two others in, now using Nexus PHT-3600 Silent CPU Cooler.
Thought it might be a power problem, maybe something's not getting enough???
I've recently become completely addicted to Counter Strike:Condition Zero, so any ideas on what's wrong and what I can do about it appreciated.

(Oh yeah, and I don't OC any of it (yet), FreshDiagnose tells me everything's OK also)

Tril

Could you post some temperatures. It may or may not be a temperature issue but without knowing your mesured temps it is impossible to guess if it is related to your problems.

If it is a temperature problem, it may be that your cpu heatsink is baadly installed. My brother has a prescot cpu. At first, when playing half-life 2 for a long time the computer would eventually shut down by itself. The bios temperature protection was kicking in and it was set at 95 degree celsius. That is damn hot. I added a fan to the case to improve case cooling. It was not enough. I removed the heatsink, cleaned the pad off, used radioshack thermal compound (I only had that in hand) on the cpu and put the heatsink on again. It improved things. I lowered the shut off temp in the bios because it was set too high. When playing half-life 2 the computer would still shut itself up by itself but it took longer even if I lowered the shut off temp. At iddle I had around 60-70 celsius. It was still too high. I though that I had put too much thermal compound so I removed the cpu heatsink again, cleaned it and the cpu and reapplied thermal compound by using less. It worked. The cpu temp reported by the motherboard is now around 50 celsius.

That is by using the default cpu heatsink and fan and cheap thermal compound. The temp could be lowered even more by changing to a better heatsink and fan combo and using better thermal compound.

Go into your bios and tell us what is/are the temperatures reported. You can also use a windows based software to monitor temperature but it needs to be well set-up to give right readings. That's why I suggest first looking in the bios.

Read the idle temps and the temps you have after you successfully reboot your computer after it beeps.

You were not very clear in your explanations. Does your computer beeps while it is in windows or does it shut down by itself and it beeps if you try to boot it right away after it shut off?

EDIT : It's about the beeps. Are they short or long? Are they always the same length? That can give some more info to help you.

niceguyrichy

That's one of the things that's been bothering me, the temp. AFTER playing for a long while is only 55C. Idle temp is around 32C. I use a Nexus PHT-3600, really damn good cooler.

The computer beeps while in windows, while the game is playing.
The beep is short, regular, (I'm a musician and I could count time off it), always the same length of beep.

I'm not an utter novice, but this is bugging me. Everything was working fine until my 9600pro fried itself 2 months ago (replaced with another 9600Pro), and since then the system hasn't really been happy.
Don't really know what else to tell you, my BIOS warning/shut off temperatures are always set at 60C, I don't really like my CPU's getting above 40 (idle). But according to the BIOS the temp. never exceeds 55C!
You tell me.

Tril

That's good for a pentium 4. I've reached 90 celsius before setting the limit temp lower and the cpu still works fine. So I would think you don't have a cpu temp problem.

Could be a problem with the replacement card.

Did you try to look at the video card temp. Tell us what they are. You said it beeped in games so it could be overheating only when switched to 3d mode and working hard.

Tipstaff

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Tril

You could test the stability of your system by running prime95's torture test. If you get an error in the first few minutes, that would mean that your computer makes calculations's errors often and it is unstable.

itchy5

ya or memtest

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niceguyrichy

The PSU, CPU, Memory are all tested and fine.
The motherboard doesn't seem to have any problems either.
Think I just had a dud card in the first place.
Of course now it seems like I have another duff card, and so I'm starting to get worried.
Please excuse my incredible ignorance, but what exactly does 'RMA' stand for?

itchy5

request merchendise "something" lol it slipped my mind...

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ReDGuiTaR

RMA : Return Merchendise Authorization

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