NVidia SLi crash Created 12 years ago2012-01-21 15:31:57 UTC by monster_urby

So this is a question for the more tech savvy members because to be honest, I am clueless when it comes to the hardware side of things.

So, I've had this PC about a year now and it's been pretty awesome for the most part. The issue I have however, is that now that games are getting prettier and more demanding I would like to make use of both my graphics cards (I have 2 NVidia GTX 570 1024MB cards and the 2nd one has been putting it's energy into either PhysX enabled games or nothing at all.)

Now, whenever I go into the NVidia control panel and change the cards to run in SLi it goes through, no problem. The issues arise a few minutes into a game. Whenever the PC spins up during a game, the slightest thing can reset the PC. I was testing it out recently in Skyrim and it was running beautifully, albeit a little loudly. Then, I hit the quicksave key and dunk the sound sticks and the screen blacks out, the machine spins down and then reboots.

The only time I have witnessed this previously is when I got a new Gfx card for my old PC. Same thing happened. The PC would be running fine, then as soon as I started a game it would freeze and reset. This was much quicker of course, usually only running the game (HL2 in this case) for about 5 seconds. That turned out to be a power supply issue in that it wasn't powerful enough to support the Gfx card.

My current PC however is sporting a 1200W power supply which according the the company that built it is overpowered for the rest of the spec.

Anyone experienced this before or know of any tests I could run?

Thanks, and sorry for the wall of text.

Temperatures ?
You could run FurMark to test for stability.

This looks like a power issue to me (even though it might not seem it is dont rule it out)

Remove 1 card and test then switch them and test the other one.
One card could have a problem that makes the other one crash.

Hmmm, so after about 3 minutes my 1st card was running at 102ºC and the 2nd at around 80ºC. Fan was running at 100% on 1st card and 2nd was at 70%. PC rebooted because of a bluescreen apparently.

Sounds like a temperature issue. Are they dirty in any way?

I shouldn't think so. Sounds like I'm gonna have to open her up and take a gander.

I used to get the same sort of crashes with my old Nvidia card, especially in HL2. (though not in newer source engine games, strangely) I'm fairly certain it was a temperature problem, as that card burned itself out. Haven't had a crash like that since I replaced it. Not sure what you could do without replacing the cards, though adding more cooling might help.

Does it happen with only certain games? I've found the most random games like Orcs Must Die! and Bionic commando Rearmed will make my gpu temps rise to +90 degrees c for some unknown reason.

With these games, if i underclock all my gpu speeds to half of normal, these oddball programs run flawlessly and with no temperature spikes. I know it doesn't fix your problem, but it's something you could try.

I would defintely at least try underclocking the card that's hitting +100 degrees c, that's pretty hott.

Well, I have AfterBurner which lets me manually alter the fans to run at a higher speed but that is loud as Hell. Otherwise it might be underclocking I need to read up on...

It's also a dumb question i know, but you have the latest nvidia installed (y/n)? If y, maybe try one of the xfastest forceware driver builds, which may run better for your rig.

I do.

I'm thinking temperatures is definitely the issue. Having looked in the case I have noticed that:

A)my cards are sat literally on top of one another, thus reducing the amount of air getting to the second card
B) The 200mm case fan is not connected to anything and so is not working.
C) There is a mount for a side fan, so I can add one of those for good measure.

Ar those cards using reference design like this: http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u127998/gpu_geforce_gtx570full.jpg ?
These are prone to overheating if you stack them
Get some cooling right away ! Otherwise you will simply burn your card out (570's aren't cheap)

That's the badger.

Cooling does seem the smart option.

Did you not build this PC?

I think he made a custom order, but didn't physically assemble it himself.

No wonder he has no idea what's in there.

Factory assembled by PCSpecialist I'm afraid. I've never to this day put my own rig together. I intended to over the course of a year or so but then I got enough money to buy one outright.