Solo Technology

[This follows last night's post "World of Warcraft Has Defeated My Computer"]

After another day semi-dedicated to tracking down my hard crashing issues with World of Warcraft, I think I’ve made some good progress.

Late last night I thought I traced it to which of the two Ethernet cards I was using (see the update on the previous post). But alas, this morning I learned right away that I was definitely woofing in the wrong woodlot.

I tried a few other minor tweaks (clearing out WoW cache and settings and such) with no luck. Then, while pondering just tossing the entire thing out the window, I decided that I had too quickly opted not to investigate temperature.

I grabbed a nice little fan known to move lots of air (see picture), removed the side panel of my computer and aimed the fan somewhere between the CPU and video card. The “at rest” results were rather astonishing.

CPU Temp dropped from 50 C to 35 C in about 1 minute.
Motherboard temp dropped from 32 C to 27 C in the same time.
Video card temp dropped from 68 C to 60 C as well.

Hmm… that tells me I definitely need to revisit/replace some case and CPU fans! In fact, I think my front case fan is looking pretty weak — it doesn’t seem to be moving much air.

After noting the initial temperatures, I recalled how cool it was in my office last night. I had been running the daughter around town and left a window open as a cold front and rain moved in. Hmm…

In game, CPU jumps to 40 - 42 C, mobo to around 29 C and video card to around 68 C. All well under where they were at yesterday.

First trial session was around 2 hours, but much of that was just parked in a busy city while I did some other stuff. This afternoon I played about 2 hours in one session and 1 or 1.5 hours in another session with no crashes.

Maybe I’ve actually traced it down this time?

If I make it through a session later tonight, I’ll be online tomorrow ordering a new heatsink/CPU (I’m looking at this Vantec unit), some new arctic silver paste, and at least one replacement case fan.

3 Responses to “WoW and Hardware Update”

1. » pingback » World of Warcraft Has Defeated My Computer » Solo Technology on March 17th, 2007 4:47 pm
   
   
2. Chris on March 17th, 2007 4:47 pm
   

   Almost a week later and no crashes yet.

3. » pingback » More on the EQ II Trial » Solo Technology on November 27th, 2007 3:59 pm
   
   

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