computer randomly restarting (CSS)

[Storan]

Recently my computer has started to restart without notice usually when I'm playing CSS, however, when it restarts it freezes on the Motherboard screen.

My rig is:
M4A87TD/USB3 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II x4 955 3.2GHz Quad Core Processor
Asus Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5
ADATA XPG G-Series 4x2GB DDR3 1600GHz
Cooler Master 500w PSU
1 back fan, 1 front fan, and CPU fan

standard operating temperature is 40 degrees celcius

one thing I did notice is that the memory is quite hot, almost hotter than the video card, sometimes I'm think that it is because of the memory. Would a side case fan help too?

 

[Ph?bus]

What harddrive do you have?

You can run virus scans, and verify the game cache

Or try updating your video drivers

 

[Storan]

ill try that in a bit.

not sure what my hard drive is, all i know is that its 2 TB

 

[Ric]

ASUS motherboards are known to restart and halt on hardware damage.
In other words, if a piece of hardware gets too hot to the point where it may cause physical damage, your motherboard says "No."
This will also explain the halting you receive at BIOS launch.
The reason why I know this is because mine did it, too.

 

[Storan]

CSS freezes stopped, but now it seems to freeze whenever

Okay, so I'm nearly 100% positive it is because of my memory. Sometimes the computer freezes if I leave lots of processes that take a good amount of memory running (As I mentioned, I have 4 sticks of 2GB RAM not even 2 CM away from the processor and has no form of cooling). Therefor if the freezes get really annoying I'll just remove 2 sticks of memory, I'm sure 4GB is plenty just for WoW or CSS.

 

[Ric]

You should just put a box fan aimed at your tower.
It'll do wonders, trust me.

 

[Storan]

box fan? could I get a link or picture? or even better if you can find one on http://canadacomputers.com/


http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?cPath=8_131
would hardware like that help?

 

[Ric]

You CAN opt for that.

I'm not sure where you live..But in America, we have box fans:

It's generally cheaper then buying a coolant device, but it's a lot bulkier and may get in the way.

One week of having a box fan aimed at one of my server boxes turned the degrees from 107 Fahrenheit to 75-78 Fahrenheit.

 

[Storan]

I'm in Canada (hinted by the website link CANADAcomputers.com) and I'm sure there are box fans up here. My computer is about 40 C (110 F for you?) and thats like 2.5x better than my previous computer, which was about 90 C (190 F for you?)

the memory cooler I'm looking at is 8 bucks CND I think? its the one that covers all 4 cards

 

[Ric]

..Your computer reached nearly 200 degrees?
Holy crap, for the lack of words I can not say on this forum.

Yeah, even in the 100's, I'd definitely get a coolant device ASAP.
That 9 dollar one would do.

 

[Storan]

Okay, so I removed 2 sticks of memory for the time being just to prevent random crashes and discovered that the RAM isn't the cause of crashing :S. My computer crashed when loading youtube.com and the tempurature for the CPU at the time was 40*C and the MB was 27*C. Fans appear to be operating just fine and there are no viruses on my computer. this is starting to get me angry