Hi, I started playing a game recent which is pretty demanding on my system and have noticed if playing for sustained time my PC will turn off and won't turn on again for a few minutes. I normally need to take the power cable out and replace it too. I've had this problem before but then it was resolved by replacing a broken cooler fan. In this case the CPU fan, case fan and power unit fan are all working fine. My graphics card is a bit dated and is only equipped with a heatsink rather than a fan. I've downloaded utilities which monitor CPU temperature etc but don't really know what is too hot for a computer to run at etc. Any help with this issue would be great, thanks.

Ideally a CPU should run at around 40C. 50C is OK but on the high side. 60C is getting a bit hot. 70C and you are in heatstroke territory. Stuart

Okay then I may have a problem.. Using SpeedFan I get readings of: Temp 1: 44C Temp 2: 79C Temp 3: -55C HD0: 46C Temp 1: 40C Not sure why there were 2 Temp 1's or even which devices or parts of the computer each number relates to but I do know that Temp 2 is looking a bit hot.. What part of the computer is Temp 2 on SpeedFan ?

Ok sorry for the double-post but after doing a bit of reading I've discovered the 80c Temp2 reading could be just an innacurate case temp reading, however I'd like to be sure. If it's not overheating is there anything else that could be causing the power-offs? This box always had 256MB of ram until a week or so ago when I put in 2 x 512mb RAM sticks. Don't see why they'd be the problem but I wasn't getting the power-offs before then. However, that could just be due to the fact I couldn't run the game for any sustained length of time with the 256 RAM. Any advice ?

Verify your power supply has the proper watts to run your hardware with this calculator. Silence is golden but duct tape is silver

Check in the BIOS and see what the BIOS says about temperature as they are likely to be the most accurate. SpeedFan is not the best at monitoring temperature and Temp2 could be almost anything, it depends on the design of the motherboard. I would ignore Temp3. -55c is a bit silly really. The extra RAM could have pushed the power supply over the limit and it is cutting off to prevent an overload burn out. Stuart

I checked my PSU and it says it has a max output of 300W, according to that power supply calculator I need about 313W. Also, I did a bit of a bodge-job when fitting my last PSU as I didn't check the pins before I bought it and it turns out it was a 24-pin but my motherboard only has a 20-pin slot but it seems to work anyway. Is this causing a significant drop in power?