Computer keeps shutting down when playing games. Can anyone help?

I just put together a new system and everything seemed to be working great, that is, until I started playing a few games. Everytime I launch Crysis or Wow (the only two I have reinstalled so far), my computer just shuts down. It doesn't shut down immediately upon starting, but only after it's been in the game for a couple minutes. After it shuts down, I have to either unplug the cord from the power supply or unplug it directly from the motherboard.

I have a Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2h, AMD X2 6000, GeForce 88000GTX, 4GB Crucial Memory, 450 Watt Power Supply.

I'm posting this under the Gigabyte motherboard section because it seems like a mb issue to me. I thought the CPU might be overheating, so I took off the heat sink, and reapplied the thermal compound. After that, I checked to see if the CPU is overheating and it seems okay. I've installed all the latest drivers for the video card.

Has anyone had a similar problem with this motherboard? Any suggestions?

Also, can anyone direct me to a resource how to fix the Windows XP and 3GB memory limitation?

THANKS!

What brand power supply do you have and how many amps on the 12v rails? 450 watts seems low! I bet my bottom dollar that you do not have enough amps on the 12v rails causing your power supply to overwork itself then reach a temperature that causes it to shutdown. You need to meet the minumum power requirements which are 30 Amps on the 12v rails.

The fact that you have to unplug your power supply tells me its the PSU, because after a power failure that is what one must do. Let me guess that you have no problems surfing the internet and this only happens when you stress your system. My Antec Neo 480 watt PSU could only manage 32 Amps on the 12v rails.

That 8800GTX puts out a huge amount of heat, your PC case might not be upto getting all that heat out. In the summer my system would do exactly what your system is doing to you, shutting down. Since then I have upgraded my PC case, it never happenned again. It would also help us if you were to include your PC case and memory timings.

I have the same issue with my machine

CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 - 'Conroe' Dual Core Processor - 2.40GHz, 64-Bit, 1066FSB, 4MB Cache, VT, LGA775
RAM Team Xtreem 4-4-4 PC2-6400 MICRON 2GB DDR2
PSU Hiper Type M 580W EPS Active PFC PSU ATX2.2/BTX 4xSATA, 8x Component Connectors, 1xPCIe
VGA XFX 520MHz 7900GT 256MB VIVO XTREME Edition NVIDIA GeForce PCIe - Dual DVI
HDD WD4000YR RE2 400GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive - 8.7ms, 16MB Cache, Western Digital Caviar
MOBO Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 i965 Motherboard
CASE Antec P180 "Performance One" BLACK Mid Tower Case

I have 580 Watts though, and not much that would take juice (old pc).

When I run the little CPU-Z diagnostic tool, my CPU is clocked at ~1596.1 Mhz, but (very) occasionally peaks at ~2400. Just wondering if that's normal or related to my problem.

Would you still advise that a PSU is the problem?

Tigerdirect has an ultra 500w cable select power supply for $29.95 plus shipping. It has a lifetime warranty if you register it online. But it's not a top rated ps. You have to decide if it's worth gambling on.

to OP, it seems psu issue as all the other's mentioned.

I think the main point is not to go by wattage alone. You'll be safer with seasonic, corsair, pc power and cooling, and my budget choices: antec and enermax. Brands matter almost as much as the wattage rating for longetivity. Corsair and seasonic have excellent warranties. And 600w in one of these brands should be fine.

Yeah I'd assumed #1 and #2.

#3 is good to know. Another PC I tested apparently doesn't have SpeedStep because it wasn't fluctuating at all.

The only examples I can provide for this problem are Hellgate: London, Loki, Soldier of Fortune 3, World in Conflict, Crysis and UT2004. UT2004 didn't originally crash when I first got this total waste of money a year ago so it's pretty good news that it does now.

All the games work fine on the other computer mentioned above. Both PCs are running XP and have the same video drivers (which are the most recent as of the time of this post). The other machine has a 7950GTX. So neither machine is particularly DX10 friendly.

Maybe my video is too pathetic to run these games.

For fun,

I discovered that during game play my GPU would cause the computer to die when it hit about 76 degrees celsius.

I don't suppose anyone knows a remedy for that? Like a good brand for cooler and a type of cooler I should use. The GPU is about 50 degrees celsius when idle too, but then it's about 35-40 degrees in the room anyway. Australia is too damn hot.

Clearly I have no idea whether this is hot or not. I had always assumed they were meant to run at somewhere around 50 degrees?

50C is not considered hot for a GPU, 60C is good, 70C is warm, 80C is hot but 90-100C is very hot! Operating temps for an 8800GTX is 60-80C and for the 8800GT those suckers run a little hotter because the single slot cooler is horrible.

I have the same problem, i did everything above suggested, none helped.
I even bought a new graphic card, and the same thing happend.
I found one thing that is the same, with our computers...
It's the motherboard, all gigabyte mobo's...
When i unplug my graph card, and leave my intergrated graph to do all the work, my comp works like a charm...
So i thout it was the graph problem...
Sorry for bad English.
My next step is ether the psu, or the motherboard....
I really hope it's the psu...

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey