Weird Overheating?

[ECA]

Not sure what the problem is but I've been getting some random crashes lately that seem to be overheating related.

The CPU temp is rocksteady around 32-34 degrees - it seems like the system temperature is spiking from a normally stableish 45 degrees up to 50-55 at which point my machine seems to be rebooting - that may not be the case but it's what I've noticed when the crashes occur.

I'm wondering wtf is happening basically - I havn't noticed any fans malfunctioning and I'm not running anything intensive sometimes. ( eg long FPS sessions where it doesn't crash or overheat and then I'm dicking around for 6 hrs on the desktop and whoomp overheating and crashing. ).

Very puzzled atm.

( I have chrome, pc probe and catalyst control center open atm and running at 50 degrees MB temperature. - CPU at 31 ).

 

[ECA]

Further googling on the mobo Asus P5Q3 Deluxe - shows that this kind of temperature should be well within operating limits so now I'm more than a bit confuzzled as to what's causing these crashes.

 

[ECA]

ok so now I'm confused as fuck.

I updated my motherboard firmware because it was like 10 versions out of date, it verified before flashing and after - I restart and now regardless of my boot setup it won't let me into windows and I'm posting from my motherboards mini-OS thing ( hurray for that ) the file manager thingy is only showing a usb drive and no hard drives.

BIOS setup is detecting both my HDDs so I'm sooper confused in the head right now.

 

[Embattle]

Tried a Clear CMOS?

 

[ECA]

Fixed the firmware thingy, the firmware update changed some bios stuff around that I had to fix.

 

[MYstIC G]

Does your board have a temperature shutdown feature. It may be within the operating limits but it might be set to trigger a shutdown. My old Shuttle did this and it was exceptionally fucking annoying until I figured out it was configured to do so.

 

[ECA]

Definately not overheating )

Board was running at 42 degrees when it crashed a little earlier, which means it's probably PSU or ram.

When it crashes it doesn't restart it just powers down.

 

[MYstIC G]

Yeah, mine did that. Do you have to pull the power cable out to get it to boot up again?

 

[ECA]

No it'll switch back on immediately nps.

 

[Noc0de]

Are there any errors when it crashes, or anything appearing in event viewer or crash logs?

Just wondering if it's a software type issue, or hardware issue as well...

I guess for testing the RAM you could try memtest/memtest86. You tend to download the software, burn it to a CD and boot from that. You then run the full set of diagnostics to check whether your RAM is faulty or not. Alternatively, try reproducing the crash (if you can) with just 1 stick of RAM in at a time.

It could of course be the PSU, don't suppose you've got another handy you could swap-out and try?