Computer restarts when I play more than four (eq)

My computer restarts when I have more than four characters playing the game EverQuest. I have an Nvidia GeForce GTS 450, 800 watt Antec power supply, 3ghz six core processor with 8gb of RAM. I don't want to format the computer is there anything I can do to fix this problem. Thank you for your time.

[MiRai]

First, if your computer is restarting by itself that means it's crashing. Windows automatically restarts itself upon a system failure, but you can disable this behavior to get a better look at the details of the crash.

Second, a GTS 450 is a very weak GPU for playing games on (even solo) and I'd never recommend that anyone attempt to multibox on such a GPU. You could easily be overloading the GPU beyond the point to where it wants to work properly.

Third, you can monitor your own hardware to see what it's doing with the following link:
http://isboxer.com/wiki/HOWTO:Tweak_you ... ottlenecks

[LargeChicken]

As MiRai said, that GPU isn't really made for intense gaming especially with multiple instances of a game open. That being said it may not be the problem. A computer restart can be caused by a multitude of things.

If the computer is just turning itself off instantaneously as if someone cut the power and with no error message you are probably running into a temperature problem and your motherboard is cutting off your computer to prevent damage. If you are getting a bluescreen the most common cause (In my experience) is a faulty ram module or you've overclocked something too much. Bluescreens can also be driver and operating system related as well so we'd need more information to diagnose that.

Do you have any more details you can provide on what's happening when the computer restarts? Can you reproduce it reliably? If so what steps would you take to cause it? Or is it seemingly random?

It only happens when I log in a fifth character I'm guessing it's a hardware issue. And it's not a restart - the computer shuts off completely. I ran the hardware tool above and couldn't pinpoint the problem, more than likely it's the video card. Any other suggestions? Thanks again.

[bob]

Computers generally shut themselves off completely as a thermal overload protection. i.e. the CPU is getting too hot. If using an onboard GPU, then this may also cause a shutdown.

Another option is you could have a lack of or faulty power circuitry (this could be the power supply, or a faulty capacitor on the MB), for which the bios settings of your computer may mean it does not start up automatically again.

Computers generally shut themselves off completely as a thermal overload protection. i.e. the CPU is getting too hot. If using an onboard GPU, then this may also cause a shutdown.

Another option is you could have a lack of or faulty power circuitry (this could be the power supply, or a faulty capacitor on the MB), for which the bios settings of your computer may mean it does not start up automatically again.

^^ basically this.. Your computer is protecting itself due to its probably hitting the thermal protection, typically on the CPU. But either the CPU or GPU is getting too hot. Do you have anything monitoring your CPU and GPU usage? I recently started multiboxing EQ2. While I know its more resource intensive than EQ1, I was 4 boxing on the following setup:

Core i5-4440 3.2GHz
16 gb RAM
GTX 750ti SC

On 4 instances of EQ2, my CPU maxes out on all 4 physical cores of the processor. What sucks is the CPU doesn't have any virtual cores in it. So, that makes for some chuggy sessions and client crashes at log off. I scaled back to 3 boxing for now until I could upgrade the processor and GPU at tax time, to see what effect that has (I'm going to move up to a core i7 and hopefully a GTX 780 or higher). 3 boxing on a single computer on my core i5 setup appears to be the sweet spot as the CPU load fluctuates between 70-80% and temps stay fairly low.

Other than upgrading some things on your machine, what is your cooling setup like?

[Skarling]

None of the issues described explain the shut-down. I boxed EQ2 on lower specs, on main pc, on laptop or variation thereof. I suggest uninstall, reload and then full install again.

From experience, you'd aim to run your main team of 3 on desktop, and 3 more on another pc. EQ2 is a hog on processor power and keeps your videocard more or less idle.

None of the issues described explain the shut-down. I boxed EQ2 on lower specs, on main pc, on laptop or variation thereof. I suggest uninstall, reload and then full install again.

From experience, you'd aim to run your main team of 3 on desktop, and 3 more on another pc. EQ2 is a hog on processor power and keeps your videocard more or less idle.

It sure is a processor hog thats for sure. Definitely moving up to a core i7 in the near future to alleviate the issues I'm having with running 4 EQ2 instances (I just don't have enough cores... and its starts to lag pretty bad). But, for the OP's issue, still not sure whats causing a total shutdown of hit machine. Sure does sound like heat though.

You could get an app like SpeedFan to monitor the temps on your motherboard, CPU, and GPU. That would give you an idea if it's heat related.

Tat