Guild Wars 2

So my buddy bought a copy of GW2 for himself and my broke kitten only to find out that it doesn’t really work on his computer. Since he’s busier these days and not quite as tech savvy, I’ve been trying to figure out how to fix the issue myself so that he can play it.

I’ll describe the symptoms, his computer, what we’ve tried so far, and go from there. Updates from me might be a bit slow just because I don’t really have access to the computer from home, so troubleshooting will kind of have to go through him first before I can update.

Anyway, here we go. His computer is actually newer and better than mine, so it’s definitely not something to do with it being under-equipped for GW2. He bought it pre-built last year online (newegg I believe). I can’t remember all the exact specs (I’ll get them from him and post here) but I’ll post what I know.

GeForce GTX 460, at least 4GB of RAM (I think it might be all the way up to eight), I can’t remember his CPU but it had at least four cores, plenty of disk space (hundreds of GB free), Windows 7 – 64 bit, and a water cooling system came built into it. According to him, the CPU is NOT overclocked.

The problem he’s getting is that whenever he gets into the game (he gets past the character screen and everything just find) the computer usually gives him about two minutes or so of beautiful, smooth gameplay only to (without warning) restart itself. Sometimes he is given a BSOD when this occurs, other times it just inexplicably restarts.

I’ve had him check his .dmp files on the BSODs, and he’s gotten a few STOP 0.0124 and one 0.09c error. The 9c error actually didn’t occur until he had played for around 20 minutes (we thought it was fixed for a bit there, quite the disappointment) He’s attempted to play it one other time after we ran CCleaner and updated his chipset drivers, and just got the non-BSOD restart after two minutes again. I don’t know if the error changing is significant or not, but it was definitely the only 9C error in the list of 124’s he’s been getting from this game only.

All of my research so far has pointed to various hardware issues, but this seems odd to me since GW2 is the only game that causes this problem for him. He’s been playing CoD: BO2 on it quite a bit, as well as Planetside 2, which I would think would be more hardware taxing than GW2, but has never had this issue with either one of them, even after hours of play. I’ve also heard that it might be a power issue and that we should check to see if his vcore is too high. However, he’s played lower-end games on it without issue as well (Diablo III, League of Legends) so I would think a high vcore problem would trigger there as well.

Breakdown of what we’ve tried so far:
-updated Nvidia drivers to the newest 370.10 which came out a few days ago.
-cleaned up registry with CCleaner
-updated mobo chipset drivers
-checked his CPU temperature with Core Temp, no issues (and it’s water cooled)
-lowered all in-game graphics settings to their absolute lowest. It was ugly, and it still restarted his computer after a couple minutes play.
-tried different characters (thinking maybe there was something in his current starting zone that his rig didn’t like for some reason) and still had the problem.
-did the suggested ‘application-controlled’ fix in the forum sticky for Nvidia cards (even though this was supposed to fix a different problem, we thought it couldn’t hurt)
-turned off some power saver setting in his control panel that another user had said fixed the problem.

None of these fixed the problem (obviously) and failed to show any improvement.

Now, I know there are more hardware checks we can do, but thus-far I’ve held off on that because of what I said above. This is the ONLY game or application that causes this. Am I wrong in thinking that an actual hardware issue would occur in other games as well?

Anyway, if anybody out there reads this who knows more than I do about BSOD errors and such can offer some advice, let me know. I know it’s long, but I know it’s usually important to be as detailed as possible with these things. I’ve tried to put the most important parts in bold to help out. If/when I find the solution I’ll be sure to update this for anyone else out there with similar issues.

Thanks a TON guys, I’ll check back in a bit later on today.

GW2 is rather demanding on the CPU. BSOD typically points to driver or hardware issues. Both 124 and 9c leads to hardware stability issues. Time to look into the bios settings.

rename the local.dat in the guild wars root directory. I was having some major crash problems with the game, as well as getting BSOD’s when first starting the game. I tried renaming the local.dat based on something I found in this forum. Honestly I did not expect much BUT much to my surprise I played yesterday completely crash free. AND I was doing the very things that would seem to cause the crashes in the past.

Give it a shot, couldn’t hurt

Hey guys, thanks for the replies.

Kirito, are there any specific bios settings you’d recommend that we take a look at?

Faden Pain, we’ll give that a try. I’ll check back in with the results when I have them.

Check to see if you got the latest BIOS version. You can try underclocking to see if its more stable or play with the ram voltage/settings. Varies with boards what you can twiddle with.

Hi SwiftWrath.9013,

Could you check what Power Supply is being used, post the model name and wattage here.

Ok so 09c and 124 BSOD’s are fequently seen by OC’ers and indicate that the voltages for the CPU/mothebroard are wrong., usualy to low.

You will have to research yourself the things that go into OCing so u dont balls things up, but bassicaly i susgest u try a small tweek in the VCore, i dont know what cpu u have so i cant give u a end figure, usualy a 0.010 step is fine but agian ..research ur cpu and how to OC it.

Other things to look at are the level of LLC (load line calibration) , i sugest u research what this is.
And finaly it could also mean you need to adjust the voltages within the QPI/VTT ..again check online what these things are and then tweek.

A rig that come with a water cooling system does so for only 1 reason. OC’ing .
Even though your friend may say it isnt OCed.. it ether is ..or Was in the past ..meaning the BIOS settings are likely tweeked and could be causing the issue.

EDIT: Download and run Prime95, do a blend test and set RAM to about 1 or 2 GB’s under your MAX . So 3gb if you have 4gb ..6 if you have 8gb, 14gb if you have 16gb. Leave it rnning for atleats 6 hours. Keep an eye on u temperatures for the 1st 30 minutes, after that u can leave it and go play on a consol, watch Tv, or somthing :P

If an error occurs it will shutdown the thread/task in question, if it BSOD’s ur computer will just restart. Ether of those 2 will indicate a CPU instability.

Thank you for the reply SolarNova, and I’m sorry I’m a bit late getting back to everyone with updates, but with the holidays and all… you know.

Anyway, it is quite strange, but I’ve had him check multiple sources (lastly his bios) to see if his processor was overclocked and it doesn’t appear to be. He’s got an Intel Core i7 950, the default clock speed for it according to Intel’s website is 3.06ghz, his is only slightly higher at 3.07ghz. So it doesn’t appear to be overclocked despite the cooling system. It appears they manufactured it so that he COULD overclock it but didn’t bother to do so, who knows.

Now, about the vcore. His motherboard is an MSI X58 Pro-E. The CPU voltage is set to [AUTO] and underneath is the CPU Vcore which is set to 1.2V. I’ve checked around a bit, and according to various OC guides for his processor, the vcore does not need to be that high. The guides were saying that vcore is the setting they use when it is overclocked to around 3.7ghz. However, when he checks CPU-Z in Windows, the vcore tends to be lower (around .9ish) and fluctuates, which I imagine is due to the [auto] setting in the BIOS. I was thinking we could play around with different settings on it though to find out if it was the culprit or not (I’ve seen other posts online about the [auto] setting not being the most reliable) but the BIOS will not allow adjustments to be made to it. All of the voltage settings are grayed out, and won’t even let him scroll over them.

We also gave Faden Pain’s method a try. I would have been completely amazed if it had fixed the problem (since the solution was so simple) but it didn’t. Getting a new local.dat file from the client did not prevent another STOP 0.0124 BSOD.

So right now I’m thinking, if it is indeed the vcore settings (which most signs seem to point to) ramping up to 1.2V during Guild Wars 2 for some reason, causing the computer to BSOD, I can think of two more possible steps to try.

The first (and this might make some computer gurus laugh) would be to overclock his CPU to a speed that will utilize more of that power. I would definitely be doing more research on this though before attempting it since something about it doesn’t seem right. I’ve always read not to OC a computer with stability issues (even if it’s just in one game) and I don’t even know if things work this way or not. I’ve also never heard of it being done, so any information on this would be appreciated (even if it’s "rofl noob thats the worst idea ever).

My second option is to flash the bios. I know he has an out-of-date version of it, but in order to flash it I’m going to have to wait until I have access to the computer later on this week. I’m expecting it to be a little more involved than I care to walk him through over the phone. My hope with this would be that it would either update the bios’s [auto] setting for cpu voltage to prevent this error, or allow us to edit the vcore setting manually to get it running.

So that’s all I’ve got for now. I don’t know what it is about gw2 that would cause these settings to fluctuate so strangely (while other games and programs do not) but I hope we can find some way to work around it. Thanks for all the help and replies so far, I’ve learned a lot. Any further advice will be much appreciated.

As you are running stock I would not bother touching the voltage settings at this point. Reason being every chip requires a different voltage to be stable and without extensive testing you will not find this especially as the instability issue could be elsewhere. ‘Auto’ whilst not ideal for o/c circumstances generally overvolts to some extent and therefore its very unlikely to be causing this.

I would look into checking the following:

1). RAM – run loops of memtest to eliminate this and set the timings manually in the BIOS according to your modules. Mainly looking at Cas, R2Cas, TRP & tRAS here.

2). Monitor GPU temps, I note you checked CPU temps are fine in the OP but didn’t mention GPU so unsure if these were checked within range as well?

3). PSU – This is probably my #1 suspect especially as you note this was a pre-built system. Most pre-builds include a terrible PSU to save costs, make/model would help here if possible as nitro mentions above.

Hi SwiftWrath.9013,

You may have missed my question, if you don’t mind could you please check what Power Supply is being used, post the model name and wattage here.

thanks

Hmm indeed, What Majestic said is correct. its unlikely that the voltages are at fault if they are running on auto and sotck clok speeds.

Do what he said and test the RAM, & GPU temps. If you happen to have another PSU the correct wattage sitting around somwhere , swaping that out would answer wether its the PSU or not. If you cant, then leave the PSU alone for now, dont wanna be buying new components only to find out it was the the cause.

Another thing you can try is simply reseating everything. Pull out the RAM, graphics card, soundcard (if u have one) and anything else plugged into the motherboard (inlcuding power leads). Pop out the CPU (so long as u have some thermal paste spare). Then put it all back together remembering to replace the thermal paste when putting the heatsink back on..

Ok I’ve got some recent developments. We haven’t tried any new troubleshooting steps, but it is good to know we’re starting to eliminate things. The PSU we’re working with is a Xion brand, 700w, model number XON-700P12N.

Also, he said he got a blue screen error during a DIFFERENT game for a change yesterday. While he was playing CoD: BO2 it gave him a STOP error 101 message, which he hasn’t received yet to this date. The primary BSOD error we’re dealing with for GW2 is still 124, which happens consistently (almost like clockwork) in gw2, but now his computer has been known to get two others, the 9c (mentioned before, during gw2) and now the 101. I’m hoping with more of these errors, the problem gets easier to narrow down.

After some brief research on the 101 errors, it may point to unknown hardware problems (again) or a bios bug. I should have access to the computer tomorrow, so I’m planning to flash the BIOS and see if that fixes it. If not, I guess we’ll start looking into memtest and reseats, etc.

Thanks for the ideas guys, if you’ve got anymore, let me know. I’ll post back again when I know more.

Definitely worth flashing to the newest bios for sure. As far as that psu goes its pretty bad honestly, runs about 36A on two 12v rails (not factoring capacitor aging) which is very low for a 700w. By comparison a mid-range quality 650w such as the corsair tx-650v2 runs about 53A. Firstly you will need to ensure each pci-e power connector for the graphics card is from a different cable set or more accurately another rail so that it balances the load over both 12v rails.

Obviously worth going through the elimination process with everything else as well.

101 BSOD’s are again even more widely seen when OC’ing and only ever points to one thing Vcore to low.

Although the bios is on default i still think it might be worth giving the CPU Vcore a boost.

In one of my last posts i mentioned downloadinga nd runnign Prime 95 ..have u done that ? ..if not do try it becouse if it fails that then its even more evidence to sugest somthing is amiss with ur bios settings.

SolarNova.1052:

EDIT: Download and run Prime95, do a blend test and set RAM to about 1 or 2 GB’s under your MAX . So 3gb if you have 4gb ..6 if you have 8gb, 14gb if you have 16gb. Leave it rnning for atleats 6 hours. Keep an eye on u temperatures for the 1st 30 minutes, after that u can leave it and go play on a consol, watch Tv, or somthing :P

If an error occurs it will shutdown the thread/task in question, if it BSOD’s ur computer will just restart. Ether of those 2 will indicate a CPU instability.

I’ve got access to the computer tonight, I have not yet run Prime 95, or flashed the BIOS, but I did take some pictures that might help. There are a lot of BIOS settings I don’t quite understand so let me know if anything looks amiss. The inside of the computer pictures were more for my reference, but if you see anything off in those, feel free to let me know as well.

Some things I noticed, and am not sure if they are normal or not:
-SYS FAN 2 shows 100% control, but is at 0 rpm. When I looked inside, I didn’t see any fans that were not connected or not working, so I’m thinking it’s probably a non-issue.
-I turned off the Intel Turbo Boost for now to see if that was causing any problems
-The BIOS is v8.12, which doesn’t seem to exist on their website. I see versions 8A, 8B, 8C, etc. but no 8.12. I wasn’t sure exactly what this means, and I don’t think his BIOS is as out-of-date as I thought it was, so I haven’t done anything with that yet.

I’ll be checking in and will post back when I know more.

EDIT: forgot to post link to the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/JjnaG#0

majestic.8129:

Definitely worth flashing to the newest bios for sure. As far as that psu goes its pretty bad honestly, runs about 36A on two 12v rails (not factoring capacitor aging) which is very low for a 700w. By comparison a mid-range quality 650w such as the corsair tx-650v2 runs about 53A. Firstly you will need to ensure each pci-e power connector for the graphics card is from a different cable set or more accurately another rail so that it balances the load over both 12v rails.

Obviously worth going through the elimination process with everything else as well.

its actually 4 rails with peak performance of 74A combined across the 4 rails. (18, 18, 18, 20)

Although I do agree with you on the point of running the graphics card from 2 seperate rails.

According to EVGA’s website they recommend 24A on the 12v rail. If this is the case then when the graphics card reaches peak usage it could be causing the BSOD’s due lack of power. It may also not be noticeable in other games as they may not be as demanding on the graphics card.

here is a link to EVGA’s GTX460 and in the small print you can see their recommendations.

This is what it says:

(Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 24 Amps.)

I’m guessing that likely means he needs a new PSU?

SwiftWrath.9013:

EDIT: forgot to post link to the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/JjnaG#0

Wow erm ..DUST man.. DUST that kitten thing, there’s so much dust there a BSOD could be being caused by a short due to the amount of dust.

I cant say i can see anything in those BIOS pics that sticks out as being wrong.

I think ill stick wiht my inital thought.

Take that thing apart , give it a good clean, put it back together and cross ur fingers. Ether the cleaning or the ‘reseating’ may fix ur issue.

The most dust u should ever see in a computer case is a little line along the leading edge of fans, and on intake filters if ur case has them. When dust starts settling along surface ..specialy the graphics card ..its past time to clean it.

SwiftWrath.9013:

I’m guessing that likely means he needs a new PSU?

not necessarily, if you were to power the card from 2 seperate 12v rails you could reach a combined output of 36A (or 38A if you use 12v4 rail).

How many 6pin PCI-E power connectors does the power supply have? If there is more than 2, have you tested swapping one connector with another?

You see some power supplies will run 2 or more 6-pin connectors on the same rail, if you used 2 from the same rail then your maximum amperage will only be 18-20A however if there are connectors on seperate rails you can get the total combined output. The connectors typically will not say which rail they are on, so you would have to go by “Trial and Error”.

This is one of the setbacks to using Multi-Rail PSU’s. This is why gamers tend to recommend single-rail PSU’s such as the corsair range. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages.

Also If you have a spare PSU to test with (Perhaps the one in your PC if you could be bothered with all that hassle and if it meet the requirements of your friends PC) you could perhaps narrow this problem down before actually replacing parts blindly on “assumptions”

My numbers were definitely correct nitro, I assume you got the numbers from the JG review which is incorrectly labelled (it’s actually the p14). Even then, no way in a million years is it 74A at combined 12v ratings due to their fantasy specs. If we work it out, the p14 is 50A on 12v (600w/12=50) but it wont even run that stable at full load, it drops below 11.8v on 50amp loads with nothing on the 3v/5v.

The p12 on the other hand has 442w combined on +12v (442/12=36.8A). That’s cutting it very very fine especially if you bare in mind what these units perform like at full load.

TLDR; bad psus – avoid.

Following the advice above and balancing components on the rails would be the best case scenario & testing a spare if possible. Not saying the cause is the psu though it could be any of the above suggested previously.

http://img862.imageshack.us/img862/2971/img0900wr.jpg

Nitro, I’m not quite sure how to try different methods on the PSU. I could swap out his PSU for mine, but since my PC is older, I have my doubts that that will fix it. Just in case though, I probably should check inside to see what PSU I have, since I can’t remember what I got (bought my PC back in 2009).

I did talk to my friend tonight, he said he wouldn’t really be opposed to upgrading/buying a new PSU, since he was planning to upgrade his PC soon anyway. It won’t be until sometime in January or February, but I’d still like to make sure the PSU is the culprit before he spends money on it. Are there any particular PSU’s you can recommend for him if it comes to that?

As for SolarNova’s reply, I have my own doubts that the amount of dust inside the PC can cause these problems. I should be able to vacuum it out tomorrow, just in case, but my PC is older, has more dust, and never gets a BSOD. I have heard that dust can cause issues, but in my own experience, most gamers don’t dust the inside of their PC’s very often, and doing so usually doesn’t fix any problems they may be experiencing.

One thing I did learn about the STOP 101 error though, is that it only began after I had him download a utility from the MSI website. It was a program that can run in windows that makes it easier to install drivers for his motherboard, including the BIOS. He tried to update the BIOS through it, and it gave him an error and restarted his computer. So rather than trying that again, I opened up the utility and updated any other drivers it recommended. After running the computer for the past several hours, we haven’t had any 101 errors from other games, but gw2 still made his computer restart (with no BSOD, but this has happened before).

I’m going to look into running prime95 or any other benchmarks that I can overnight while I still have access to his computer. I’ll check back in when I have more information. Thanks again guys!

I think solar just meant with regard to the dust can adversely effect temps but if they are fine there should be no issues. Wouldn’t vac though due to static, compressed air would do the trick

Would probably be worth testing your psu if it’s not too much hassle if only to eliminate it (depending on wattage and such). As far as a new PSU goes it would depend on how high you want to go but for the current system a good 600w will do. Some good oems are seasonic, delta, zippy, enermax. The list here gives some good basic information: http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/323050.aspx

I would recommend something like the seasonic s12II-620 but it really would depend how much future proofing you want with capacity and if modular is important.

majestic.8129:

I think solar just meant with regard to the dust can adversely effect temps but if they are fine there should be no issues. Wouldn’t vac though due to static, compressed air would do the trick

Would probably be worth testing your psu if it’s not too much hassle if only to eliminate it (depending on wattage and such). As far as a new PSU goes it would depend on how high you want to go but for the current system a good 600w will do. Some good oems are seasonic, delta, zippy, enermax. The list here gives some good basic information: http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/323050.aspx

I would recommend something like the seasonic s12II-620 but it really would depend how much future proofing you want with capacity and if modular is important.

I’ve never exactly tested a PSU before, any suggestions on how to do this?

Sorry I should have been clearer, what I meant by testing is basically swapping out your psu with your friends to test.

Another method is to use a digital multi to monitor the voltages under load of your friends current psu although I wouldn’t recommend this way unless you are confident with it. Can provide more info if needed.

@majestic.8129

You were right, I did look at that review and they do have the wrong label, however according to the image you provided which has the P12N, it is 2x 12v Rails with a total of 43A but indeed that doesn’t tell us anything about the Power Factor those units use.

@SwiftWrath.9013

I am almost certain that the power supply is the cause, I have seen and experienced those symptoms many times. However I wouldn’t want you replacing parts without being 100% sure yourself. The EVGA website does state you need a power supply with atleast 24A on a single rail, your friends only has 22A and even then you would want more than 24A just to be on the safer side.

There is multiple ways you can go about this.

• You could install a less powerful graphics card and run the game and see if the game freezes (the less powerful card will hopefully require less that 20A meaning the PSU should be able to handle it). You mentioned that your computer was older? perhaps you could tell us what graphics card you have and we could see about testing your friends system with that.

• If the computer has onboard graphics you can remove the graphics card also and test without it.

• You can check for spare PCI-E 6pin connectors on the power supply and test different combinations of 6pin connectors in the graphics card. If one combination works fine and another doesn’t then its certainly a case of the PSU at fault but you could still keep and use the power supply.

• You could use a power monitor and record the total power drawn from the computer when playing GW2 and a little math will tell us how much stress the power supply is under.

You also asked me for a recommendation of power supply incase your friend decided to buy one. You must understand that to me, a power supply is considered the most important and vital component to a computer without it your computer won’t work. Bear this in mind when looking at my recommendation.

This would be enough for the current system:
http://www.corsair.com/en/power-supply-units/tx-series-power-supply-units/enthusiast-series-tx650-v2-80-plus-bronze-certified-650-watt-high-performance-power-supply.html

@SolarNova.1052

PCB’s now come coated to prevent dust build up interfering with the onboard circuitry. This also helps prevent the build up of static electricity and allows for PCB’s to actually be handle aswell, although most people still follow best practices and use anti-static equipment to be on the safe side.

Yea it was long shot that it would fix the issue. But its still a kitten good idea to keep the inside of ur case clean. The amount of dust in those pics will be causing some issues with heat even if temps are still within the ‘ok’ zone.
But yea it was unlikely to fix the issue.

I do hope a new PSU helps ..its one of the less expensive parts of a computer to replace to fix a hardware issue :P ..well…depending on how much u spent on the computer in the in the first place :P

Nitro.4732:

@majestic.8129

You were right, I did look at that review and they do have the wrong label, however according to the image you provided which has the P12N, it is 2x 12v Rails with a total of 43A but indeed that doesn’t tell us anything about the Power Factor those units use.

Yer as i’m sure you are aware most trash brands outright lie on the label, the only way I found out the true amperage is by pulling up the actual specs from the manufacturer SuperFlower and working it out that way.

Ok so I finally got the BIOS flashed, no issues to report there, everything went smooth. Afterwards I downloaded Prime95 and started running it. After a few minutes the core temperatures, according to ‘Core Temp’ were all in the high 80’s, low 90’s degrees Celsius. I looked around the internet a bit, apparently even under a blend stress test, they should not be getting that high.

I let the test run for a little over 30 minutes, and decided to stop since one of the cores had reached 98C degrees. Upon ending the test, the temperatures dropped almost immediately down into the 60’s, which must be why we couldn’t detect any heating problems before since by the time we went into the BIOS after a BSOD all the temps would be back down to 60, whether or not they had climbed too high during the game. Other than the high temperatures, I received no warnings or issues from Prime95, and it also said it had passed a test of some sort.

Afterwards I opened the case back up and used one of those compressed air canisters to clean out the majority of the dust. While I was in there I noticed one of the supposed water cooling hoses was a bit kinked. Due to the angle in which it was installed, I was unable to correct this kink, (which can kind of be seen in the pictures I posted last night) so I’m wondering if this has something to do (or everything to do) with it as well.

I’m going to try running Prime95 again to see if dusting it did any good. I just turned the computer on and the idle temps are in the mid 30’s right now, so I’ll let you guys know what happens.

Wow yes. .very high temps …specialy since ur on stock clocks.
The cooling is most deffinatly not working correctly. It is also HIGHLY likely to be the cause of your BSOD’s. A CPU will force a shutdown if damaging temperatures are hit.

With water cooling and on stock settings u should have a very cool CPU, the fact its overheating at stock settings sugests a major issue with the cooling.

Make sure the raidiator is fully dust free, make sure its getting good airflow. get rid of that kink, if it means re-routing the pipes or bodging it with a bit of string to hold the pipe in an unkinked position. .do so. make sure all the fans r working.

If after all that temperatures still get high. take of the block ontop of the CPU and reseat it with new thermal compound.

If that then doesnt help make sure there is indeed coolant wihtin the system becouse that would be the only thing left to check.

The time u had Prime95 on wouldnt be enough to tell u whether ur CPU is stable or not, however these temperature r now the prime suspect ..just use the program to test ur temps again.

Thanks Solar, I just ran Prime95 again after clearing some of the dust out. The temps started getting too high again after about ten minutes in. I’m going to look into unkinking the tube somehow.

Those temps do sound high. I re-read your previous posts and on one of your pictures you have your v-core set to 1.272v, this to me doesn’t seem right considering the i7-950’s tend to run at 0.8v – 0.9v on default stock speeds. This could be playing a big part in your temperature problem and it would worth testing with Prime95 on the [AUTO] setting.

As for the dust, a simple (previously unused) paint brush will help clean the fans and the radiators, be careful when using compressed air cans as the tend to leak if you spray for too long at a time, use short bursts at a time and keep the angle of the can in the right position.

Looking at the picture of the cooler I couldn’t see where the kink was, but if its a major kink it will certainly be slowing down the coolant flow inside and weakening the thermal dissipation.

Re-applying some new thermal paste would be a good idea also considering the age of the hardware.

Also if you believe guild wars might be causing these high temperatures you can easily get a monitoring tool and verify what temperature guild wars is creating for your CPU.
However guild wars will not put 100% full load on the quad core like Prime95 does, and because of its Hyper Threading ability the CPU will most likely only be in the 30-40% range I would assume. Either way, its still worth correcting the heating issue but I am not fully convinced that this is the main cause of the BSOD’s

I fixed the kink with a twist-tie, but it made no difference in the temperature climb. I also enabled the Smart Fan Target setting in the BIOS, set it to 50 degrees and min speed at 37%, still no luck.

I don’t see any fans on the inside that aren’t spinning, but I’m still a bit curious about the Sys Fan 2 being at 0 rpm.

He’s taking the computer back tonight, so I’m going to have him try guild wars for a bit, and alt+tab from time to time to check the temperatures in core temp.

The vcore setting is on auto, and then it shows the 1.272v underneath that. It doesn’t allow me to change these settings in the BIOS as far as I can tell, so I don’t know how I could get it down to .8 or .9v, is there another way to do this? I assumed the auto setting was meant to lower it or increase it as needed, and I think we saw it down to .9v when we looked in CPU-Z awhile ago.

Anyway, that’s it for now, I’ll check back in a bit later tonight.

The SysFan2 @ 0rpm is probably just because there is no fan connected to the “SysFan2” connector on the motherboard.

You’ll also want to have the fans on the cpu cooler running at 100% if you can rather than 37%.

Perhaps the voltage setting is correct and that the cpu only reach 0.8v when the Intel SpeedStep technology activates (lowering the cpu clock speed)

The cpu fan is at 100% ‘control’ in the bios, but the smart fan setting was completely disabled, which supposedly is some setting designed to ramp up the fan speed in order to maintain a certain temperature. So I just enabled that and set the min to 37% which is just the minimum speed it can lower itself down to when the temperature is cool.

In that case the only 2 thigns left would be to reseat the cooler wiht new thermal paste. And if that doesnt work, then although unlikely. .it could be that the whole cooling unit has leaked at some stage in its life and there isnt enough or any coolant left inside.

There is no ligical reason for having such high temperatures even with a small water cooling unit like that one. When the core is running stock settings.

The above pretty much covers it just a couple of things. The tjmax for that CPU is 100c but it shouldn’t get anywhere near this (wouldn’t really like to go over 80c) so obviously a major problem.

You could try manually lowering the vcore to reduce temps but may have to try a few different values to maintain stability, knowing the vid would help which shows in realtemp/core temp. You could try starting at say 1.00v, by changing the auto setting to manual so the below option becomes available. The auto setting generally speaking over volts a fair amount.

This won’t really fix the core problem though so recommend following SolarNova’s advice above, sounds like the whole loop needs examining/blocks reseating.

It doesn’t let you change the auto setting for the vcore either.

Sounds like the cooler is bad or the heat paste needs to be redone had a similar problem so i replaced the cooler with the one in the link . took care of the heat problem right away

http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Hyper-N520-RR-920-N520-GP/dp/B001NJ0D0Y/ref=sr_1_15?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1356670647&sr=1-15&keywords=cooler+master

SwiftWrath.9013:

It doesn’t let you change the auto setting for the vcore either.

So you cannot adjust the voltages by using +/- on the keypad?

Seems you have bios 8c but probably not necessary to update.

majestic.8129:

SwiftWrath.9013:

It doesn’t let you change the auto setting for the vcore either.

So you cannot adjust the voltages by using +/- on the keypad?

Seems you have bios 8c but probably not necessary to update.

I updated it to 8F last night, everything was still grayed out in the voltage settings. I didn’t try the + or – keys though, I guess I just assumed that still wasn’t working because it didn’t work with the older BIOS version either. Is that a known change in the latest update or something? I only read things about memory compatibility and stuff.

Anyway, I’ve got some good news. He took the computer home and fired up GW2. He was able to play for a little over an hour without issue. I had him alt+tab from time to time to check the temperatures in core temp which he said remained steady around 60 degrees Celsius. I realize this is still a bit too high for a water cooled processor though, so we’ll have to continue looking into this problem.

So after playing for a little more than an hour, apparently his game froze and had to be closed via ctrl+alt+delete method. I’m not sure what caused this, but I’m hoping it’s some kind of software fluke that happens from time to time. Either way, it’s a huge improvement from BSOD. He’s got work in the morning so he’s off for the night, but he’ll be playing GW2 some more soon and we’ll see if anything happens.

Between the BIOS update and unkinking the water cooling hose, I think one of these is likely responsible for the improvement, but I think it’s still too early to call it until we’ve tested it more.

The heating issue is likely going to need us to take things apart on the inside to determine what the problem is. Neither of us have ever worked with water cooling hardware before (the computer was pre-built and shipped to him) so he may end up needing to take it to professional who can take things apart without dumping water all over the motherboard. I’ll look into it though, and see what we can do.

That’s it for now, I’ll be back though with updates when I have them.

I don’t see why you would need to strip the water cooler down. However you may want to check out the thermal paste, prolonged usage at high temperatures have probably degraded its performance over time. Some new paste may be the difference between 60c and 45c when playing GW2.

Also did you check to see if there were more PCI-E connectors available on the power supply.

So it looks like the problem still persists. He hasn’t had a BSOD, but now he’s tried playing three times and received two freezes and a restart. The first freeze (mentioned above) happened after he was able to play for a little over an hour. Second freeze happened today after he played for three minutes. Both times he said his computer was fine, but he had to ctrl + alt + delete to get out of the game.

I had him repair his local.dat file again, thinking maybe all the previous BSOD’s caused some form of corruption. He was then able to play for about ten minutes before the computer restarted itself. He didn’t get a BSOD, and there was no new dump file created, it was just a random restart.

My current theory is that we’ve been dealing with separate issues. I believe the BSOD’s are likely fixed now, as he hasn’t had one since I updated the BIOS and fixed the kink in the cooling tube. The BIOS update said it fixed some memory compatibility issues and such, so I’m thinking that’s what did it. The restarts (without BSOD) are probably due to an underachieving power supply, as most of what I’ve read about such issues points to that. (Other hardware failures tend to be accompanied by a BSOD, correct?) The game freezes are a new one, I’m hoping that it was just due to corrupted local.dat file, but I probably won’t know until later.

Overheating while playing GW2 doesn’t appear to be a problem, however, since I have had him monitor his temps. They’re a little warm, but nothing high enough to cause issues. I’d still like to be able to run a decent Prime95 test on it though, just to be safe. Nitro, you mentioned I wouldn’t have to strip down the water cooling system. I wasn’t thinking I would have to, but doesn’t water leak out when you unhook it from the processor? I’ve never worked with these before so I’m not really sure what is between the processor and the tubes, is it a completely separate and sealed unit? I guess that would make the most sense since I doubt the four screws holding it on would provide a water tight seal lol. I have applied thermal paste, heat sinks, and fans before though, so if that’s the case I don’t imagine it would be too difficult.

I think it is safe to say that he needs a new PSU at this point, so I’m going to let him know that. He’d like to upgrade this PC at some point in the not-too-distant future anyway, so I think that’s going to be mandatory at that point even if it’s not the cause of the random restarts.

I also thought I’d post a brief recap of what’s happened so far, just to compile everything for simplicity sake.

Relevant Computer Specs:
-GeForce GTX 460
-6GB RAM
-Intel Core i7 950, 3.07ghz (water cooled, not overclocked)
-MSI X58 Pro-E Motherboard, (BIOS version now at latest, 8F)
-Xion XON-700P12N, 700w PSU

Symptoms:
After a few minutes of playing GW2 the computer receives either a BSOD (now possible fixed), random restart, or the game freezes (requiring ctrl+alt+delete to be closed).

Steps taken so far:
-newest video card drivers updated (v370.10)
-application controlled AA in nvidia settings as suggested by forum sticky
-power saver setting turned off in control panel
-different zones/characters tried
-registry cleaned with ccleaner
-applied lowest setting graphics
-did a repair of local.dat file
-newest chipset drivers applied
-DirectX 9 updated
-Intel Turbo Boost turned on/off
-BIOS flashed
-kink tied off/fixed on water coolant hose
-cleaned dust out of inside of PC and fans
-(we have not seen a BSOD since this point)
-enabled SMART fan setting, set to 50C, min fan speed at 37%
-Prime95 run for up to 30 minutes. Temperatures climb into the 90’s Celsius after ten minutes, even after coolant kink fixed. However, temperatures remain steady at 60C while playing GW2.
-repaired local.dat a second time

Other pertinent information:
-Vcore setting in BIOS is unable to be modified.
-Vcore overall setting is set to [auto] and shows to be running at 1.2v. According to Cpu-z it does drop down to .9v as per the auto-setting.
-pictures of inside of PC and BIOS settings (before flashing, version is 8C, but settings are still pretty much the same): http://imgur.com/a/JjnaG#0

Does sound like a PSU issue tbh.

If after getting a new PSU, I Sugest a Corsair model like the TX 600W (this would also be fine for his new computer if/when he decides to build it), the system restarts stop but the game crashes continue ..i sugest reinstalling GW and/or the OS ..since all these crashes and BSOD’s could easily have caused damage to the game and/or OS.

If after getting a new PSU the problems continue ..then im pritty much at a loss as to what else it coud be other than faulty CPU and/or motherboard and/or GPU. In which case u might aswell build a enitirly new computer ..take a sledge hammer to the old one which will thus make u feel sooo much better

That sure is a dusty case on the inside, or maybe i’m just a neat freak and airblast at any sign of dust.

Does sound like a PSU issue tbh.
If after getting a new PSU, I Sugest a Corsair model like the TX 600W (this would also be fine for his new computer if/when he decides to build it), the system restarts stop but the game crashes continue ..i sugest reinstalling GW and/or the OS ..since all these crashes and BSOD’s could easily have caused damage to the game and/or OS.
If after getting a new PSU the problems continue ..then im pritty much at a loss as to what else it coud be other than faulty CPU and/or motherboard and/or GPU. In which case u might aswell build a enitirly new computer ..take a sledge hammer to the old one which will thus make u feel sooo much better

As satisfying as that would be, I’d rather take the sledge hammer to the fools who built this computer with an inadequate PSU, a kink in the cooling hose, and whatever the hell is causing the potential heating issue in Prime95 is probably negligence on their part as well.

kirito.4138:

That sure is a dusty case on the inside, or maybe i’m just a neat freak and airblast at any sign of dust.

Already taken care of, those pictures were taken before we cleaned out the inside. :P Unfortunately, this did not solve the issue.

Hey guys, I’ve got some recent developments. I was doing some research on his PSU and looking at possible other PSUs he might use, and I noticed something was off. First of all, I had to do a lot of research because I’m not too familiar with PSUs to begin with. Once I understood more about the different rails and amp settings required for his card, the earlier comments you guys made began to make more sense.

What I noticed (by looking at one of my own pictures posted above) was that only one PCI-E connector was inserted into the video card. I instantly "wtf"d, and had him verify what card he had again. I’m not sure which one of us misread the card (probably me actually, lol) but it’s actually a GeForce GTS 450. Which meant there was no way to connect two PCI-E 6 pin connectors to it. However, this card supposedly only requires 22A instead of the 24A we previously thought it would need, according to EVGA’s site. Since there are two +12v rails on the PSU, one of them at 21A and the other at 22A, I thought maybe we just had the wrong PCI-E connector plugged in. I had him swap those out and give GW2 another shot.

About 15 minutes in he got a BSOD. It was another 9c. So I’m not sure if the PCI-E connector swapping fixed the restarts, or if they caused the new 9c error (I doubt it though, since we’ve received 9c errors before).

So from there I did some more research on 9c errors, and QPI/VTT settings kept coming up. I thought we were out of luck at this point, but I had him try editing the voltage settings in the BIOS again (using + and – keys on the numpad) to see if the updated version allowed for alterations. It did!

I first had him look into the CPU voltage setting which was set to [auto]. He said that it increases or decreases in small increments, with a + or – sign next to it, and that he was NOT able to edit the more specific vcore setting below it. I assumed this likely meant the vcore number below would be altered by whatever we put in for the CPU voltage setting, adding or subtracting to it. I told him to set it for -.2, aiming for an overall setting of 1.72v, based on numbers I could find online for people with the same processor who overclocked it to a low setting (3.06 up to like 3.4ghz) and went with 1.1v. We saved it and started up the comp to an instant BSOD.

So we set it back to [auto] and I decided we won’t make any more changes to those settings until I know more. I’m not sure if that was just a bad number for the vcore (since it wasn’t nice and round, at 1.1) or if it was too low/too high. I think the auto setting must be subtracting or adding based on the processor’s current load, and since we’ve seen it at .9v or so before, it might be doing it’s job just fine and I probably did set it too high. If I was to try it again I would shoot for a .9v setting, but I’d like to hear your guys’ input on this first.

Besides, it might not even be the vcore setting. Supposedly 9c often relates to the QPI/VTT voltage. I don’t even know what this is though. Most of my searching just turns of forum posts from OCers theory crafting different settings for it. I think I’ve determined that QPI is for Intel and VTT is for AMD cards (which would explain why there is no “VTT” mentioned in his BIOS settings) but I still have no idea what to set it to for normal clock speeds other than [auto]. I even read a post by someone who said that his motherboard was known for overdoing the QPI voltage with the [auto] setting which could be the cause of the issue. I haven’t verified this, but it did seem unusually difficult to find stock voltage settings for his CPU for some reason. I think this is the next step to try, since we are still likely dealing with power issues, and [auto] settings can be so vague.

I know his PSU is still pretty much crap though. It’s got bad reviews around the internet, and barely meets the recommended amp settings for his GPU. It’s got to go eventually, but I wouldn’t think that it would cause these BSODs, would it? Random restarts make more sense with a faulty PSU since suddenly losing power would essentially just shut off the computer without allowing for a BSOD wouldn’t it?

Anyway, sorry for another long post, but you guys have been a huge help so far. I feel like we’re getting to the crux of the issue, so I have no intention of stopping now. :P

1.72 volts for vcore is way too high, wouldn’t be surprised it BSOD. Could even damage the CPU if left like that.

In [auto] mode the mobo will supply voltage based on the VID of the CPU. Voltage changes dynamically depending on the speed from .8v – 1.35v

If you set a specific number, then the voltage will be static at idle or load. If it is too low or too high, BSOD will occur. Since each CPU is manufactured differently, it’s stable voltage will vary.

http://www.evga.com/forumsarchive/tm.asp?m=100494809&mpage=1&key if you want to learn more.

Kirito explains it well, I would probably leave the voltage settings at auto at this point. I only suggested it to attempt to lower the temps but its probably better to look into sorting out the cooling.

Even so, I think the problem still likely lies with the PSU. Your question about what can happen in this case, well I have had the following as a result of a shot PSU:

- Crash to desktop
- System freeze (commonly accompanied by a buuurrrr sound), needing a manual system restart or shutdown.
- BSOD
- System restarts automatically
- System shutdown automatically

So at this point you really need to clean the cpu die/block and reapply some good thermal paste at the least and look into testing a new PSU when possible.

kirito.4138:

1.72 volts for vcore is way too high, wouldn’t be surprised it BSOD. Could even damage the CPU if left like that.

In [auto] mode the mobo will supply voltage based on the VID of the CPU. Voltage changes dynamically depending on the speed from .8v – 1.35v

If you set a specific number, then the voltage will be static at idle or load. If it is too low or too high, BSOD will occur. Since each CPU is manufactured differently, it’s stable voltage will vary.

http://www.evga.com/forumsarchive/tm.asp?m=100494809&mpage=1&key if you want to learn more.

I typed that in wrong, it was actually set at 1.072, not 1.72. Sorry about that. Yea there was no way I was going to try and set the voltage higher than what it already was lol.

Majestic, thanks for the reply, I guess we can look into that next. I keep thinking it must be an issue with the BIOS settings I guess since the problem is primarily limited to Guild Wars 2. We did get that one BSOD during COD:BO2, but it may have been a result of us tampering with some things.