Weird hardlock issue.

I've had this issue that plagued my desktop for a short while after building. Rarely, when starting something like, say, BC2, or STALKER: Call of Pripyat, I run the risk of having a hard lock that requires a power down to fix. I'm really starting to suspect it's power related, possibly with my UPS, though there's the chance that my PSU (Antec Earthwatts 500) may be at fault as well.

Although, really, I should be called an idiot for putting a desktop like mine on a UPS like that. :|

e: oh wait, forgot to mention that this case (Antec Three Hundred) has two case fans. Not sure how much difference that makes.

Well whats the specs on your system?

500w PSU is rather small depending on what you have. If you could tell us the specs of your PC that could help us.

Ok got your specs from another thread:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE
4GB DDR3
500GB HD
AMD Radeon HD 6850
Win7 Home Premium 64-bit

Ok the 6850 at full usage eats up 278 watts of power. The 955 uses 236 Watts at full usage. That alone is taxing your 500w PSU. I dont know if you overclock at all but if you do then you are using more watts yet. Id say upgrade to something around 750-850w depending on if you know you will be upgrading later on.

Have you gotten your chipset drivers? (your built in Gcard drivers along with networking and hard drive controller issues) try going to event viewer (Hit the start button and in search type Event Viewer) go to Administrative events and see if there's an error or issue as your hard lock happens (Note the time too) Hard locks usually happen when your hard drive spends way too much time trying to retrive the data. You could also try using a defrag program (A good one is Defraggler www.piriform.com) It's free and does a good job.

Hey hydra your specs used to be the SAME EXACT as mine save for the 6850, I have a 6870. I use a 730W and I can run everything fine. I definitely agree with Plum on this...it's most likely your PSU. If you ever plan on crossfiring that 6850 or getting a more powerful card (bf3 will most likely be too much for that 6850 to run at max) go with around 850W.

I don't plan on crossfiring the 6850 I have now or anything like that. And I feel like that if it were the PSU this would be happening way more often, as right up until said hardlock I hadn't actually rebooted for close to a month. And in that time, I'd been playing BC2 for hours on end.

If the PSU really, really is at fault, here, I don't exactly have the money at the present time to try swapping it for something slightly higher.

Did you try defrgging you hard drive? or using Event viewer?

Event Viewer only shows what I was expecting: Windows did not shut down cleanly. Defragging wouldn't help as data access (reads or writes) would just take substantially longer and /not/ cause a complete loss of responsiveness.

I don't plan on crossfiring the 6850 I have now or anything like that. And I feel like that if it were the PSU this would be happening way more often, as right up until said hardlock I hadn't actually rebooted for close to a month. And in that time, I'd been playing BC2 for hours on end.

If the PSU really, really is at fault, here, I don't exactly have the money at the present time to try swapping it for something slightly higher.

The numbers dont lie, your graphics card alone is using close to 300W. You also have a VERY power hungry CPU. 500W isnt enough to run a computer with a 6850 and that CPU at full load. The reason it might not happen in other situation or games, is because likely it isnt being pushed to full load.

Your system is bottlenecking SOMEWHERE if you can't afford a better PSU, try turning something down a tiche to see if maybe your Gcards pushing too much? Thing is so many things can cause a lock up it's reallllly hard to fix, I remember I would get random lock ups while playing games, and it ended up just... disappearing one day without cause.

well hydra it can tell you that underclocking you system slightly and also turning you system to sleep more often will help with the lock up if is psu right now because it lower demand and also cuts down on full running power which is required when you system is on unless you set your system to automatically lower core clock when system is not in use. if you think its the back pull if off if your outlet is safe for a period of time of like 10 minutes during which time start bc2 run prime 95 and fur mark to see if the system hard locks from psu overload because during short amount of time around 15sec-3mins your psu will push itself to max power. if it doesnt lock up on you do it again for another 10 minutes if it doesnt do it again hook the back up and repeat twice to see if it does it than. if so you than know that it can handle it and needs to be replaced at which point i would still up the psu because eventually running at max like that for too long it will short out and than no pc.

Happened again, still suspecting a power issue. Right now I'm watching my CPU/GPU usage and temps through amd overdrive. If it happens again with high cpu/gpu usage, then it's more than likely the PSU. I'm still going to swap outlets at some point as this apartment has really, really terrible wiring.

e: noticed my temps pushing up into the 70C range for my CPU while running Prime95. Not a good sign at all... though the cabling in my case is a mess at the moment and I really need to move one of the fans it came with to the front (if that's even possible)

e2: temps are also getting dangerously high, pushing up around 70C for the CPU and 80C for the GPU. I have virtually zero intake out in front, but I think I could move the case fans around for better airflow, unless someone has a better suggestion.