Crashes, reboots and voltage warnings playing Skyrim, Deus EX

Hello,

My pc spontaneously rebooted 2 times while playing Deus Ex a couple of months ago.
I installed Intel Desktop Utilities to monitor my pc while I was playing and got the regular warning "[+12 Volts] out of recommended range. (11.000 V)"

This would happen after about an hour of play.
I was always able to close down my game without crashing and voltage would go back to normal.

Until today, playing Skyrim, during an intensive battle the screen went white with little dots and then BSOD.

I only have warnings and crashes during gaming.

thanks,
Phil

Hi Phil,

is this a store-bought PC or a custom build? Sounds a lot like the power supply isn't able to cope with the continuous power demand of your PC's components when playing games.
This is somewhat typical of cheap, no-name (or I-never-heard-of-them-before brand name) PSUs which tend to fall short of their rated maximum wattage, and will drop voltages like no tomorrow once they do reach that maximum output.

Corazon,

That makes sense.

It's a retail pc, about 2 years old. I have added an SSD drive and a few sticks of ram since I bought it, perhaps increasing my power needs. The only labels I can see on the power supply are illegible, so I don't know the brand or
even the wattage. From memory I'd guess its rated at 450 or 500 watts.

I'm going to use one of those power supply calculators to see how much power I require. And call the pc company to find out which supply I currently have.

Thanks for the reply!