Bioshock shuts my computer down

[jimdg]

Any help would be appreciated, I have reached Apollo Square without any trouble, and now, I play for roughly half an hour and my pc decides to shut down without warning. it does it every time.

I'm confused more, due to nearly getting to the end of the game without any glitches, and all of a sudden, it all goes wrong :confused:

Specs are:

AMD 64 Athlon X2
Radeon HD 2600 XT
Windows XP Pro x64
4 gig ram
direct x 9

[CherryIcee]

Does it shut down in the exact same palce each time or different areas? If not, I'm wondering if it's an overheating issue.

[esipode]

This kind of thing has happened to me before.(not on bioshock though,i have it for the 360.)And from personal experience i have learned that it is one of two things.(or both.)
1.Overheated from playing too long,as cherryicee already mentioned.
2.Some games just crap out from playing them for a certain amount of time. Not that it's programmed this way,just a bug.

[headkase]

Bioshock is a very demanding application so it does generate a lot of heat inside the computer. The reason I'm parroting CherryIcee here is because just last week it was causing my computer to shut down as well. All my other games ran fine but Bioshock makes more heat than them. Clogged (with dust) fans/heatsinks were the issue so I took my computer into the shop and had them replace the CPU Fan/Heatsink, Power Supply (who's fan was gunked too), and Case Fan. Since then not a single issue - it's fixed.

[jimdg]

Does it shut down in the exact same palce each time or different areas? If not, I'm wondering if it's an overheating issue.

It shuts down in different areas, not the same place. I think it could be an overheating issue, I'm just a bit confused as to why I got so far through the game before this started to happen, especially as my pc is 4 weeks old and the graphics card is 2 weeks old!

Thanks for the replies so far, all helps. Think I might take the computer to my local pc expert up the road, I was just hoping this might have been an issue I could remedy without parting cash!

[CherryIcee]

Often times it has nothing to do with how new or old the pc is, it has to do with cooling. Not all cases are created equally when it comes to airflow design. Also it can depend on how many fans you have inside, size/s of the fan/s, fan speed, how clean (or dirty) the fans/vents are. Also keep in mind that videocards (even high end cards) often times have horrid stock Heatsink/Fans. They also usually just slop the thermal paste on the top of the GPU at the factory and slap the HSF down on it and screw it together. With EVERY pc I build for customers/clients, I ALWAYS remove the HSF and wipe the factory paste off and use Artic Silver 5 which often cools the card down considerably. Depending on the stock HSF for the videocard, I sometimes order an aftermarket cooling unit to replace the stock HSF.

Now factor in the heat being generated from other components inside the machine, most notably the CPU (which can also suffer from issues with Thermal paste and HSF not being mounted tightly/properly) and you start to see why airflow is so important. Lastly, ambient room temperature and ventilation can also play a big part in overheating issues. If the room is overly warm or if the pc is stuffed inside some desk cabinet or whatever that can cause problems as well.

I forgot to mention that (as headkase already stated) some applications are more demanding than others, so depending on how hard your hardware has to work also affects the heat generated by that hardware. Bioshock is indeed a demanding game so it's going to heat up your card far more than say watching a video or playing something less intensive.

[jimdg]

All good advice, thanks (dont think i trust myself with taking heat sinks off etc)

I have managed to overcome it now, bit unorthodox, but i've just removed a side panel off the pc case, seems to have done the trick (doesn't look too pretty though!)

Once again, thanks for the help and suggestions.