My Mac is crashing only while game playing - Please help? :)

Hi everyone, i'm pretty new to all this so bear with me

I've got a 2006 iMac - 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB SDRAM and in the last 3 weeks when i've been playing games after a while (sometimes instantly) my mac just freezes up? Sometimes it doesn't even produce the black crash screen?

The wierd thing is that it only happens when i play games, i thought it may have been a bug from World of Warcraft but it happens with others now too. My only thought could be that somehow my Graphics card has been damaged but i'll admit i'm at a total loss.

My warranty also ran out last October so i could use any advice on what the problem may be or how to fix it. Please help guys.

- Andy

I am guessing its an over heating problem
Download istat pro - http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=7

and check on your temps. dont let it get above 75*c to 80*c without the fans. the fans should come on automatically, when i game or render video or high demanding task use icyclone to wack the fans up - http://www.alitacrew.org/icyclone/

hope this helps

christm said:

I am guessing its an over heating problem
Download istat pro - http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=7

and check on your temps. dont let it get above 75*c to 80*c without the fans. the fans should come on automatically, when i game or render video or high demanding task use icyclone to wack the fans up - http://www.alitacrew.org/icyclone/

hope this helps

Click to expand...

Many thanks i'll give it a try. Overheating would make sense after long playing but it also crashes sometimes after a minute or less.

I'll let you know

Andy

*Moved thread to correct forum - Question on Apple Desktop Hardware and is not a forum suggestion or comment*

It won't take but a minute or so for it to get too hot if the fans are not operating properly. This would be my first guess.

If it is doing it while playing WoW, try playing in windowed mode rather than full screen. Need to find out if it is crashing only the game (and you still have access to the desktop) or if your entire system is crashing. If you're in full screen mode when WoW crashes, you still have no access to get back to the desktop.

bobtomay said:

It won't take but a minute or so for it to get too hot if the fans are not operating properly. This would be my first guess.

If it is doing it while playing WoW, try playing in windowed mode rather than full screen. Need to find out if it is crashing only the game (and you still have access to the desktop) or if your entire system is crashing. If you're in full screen mode when WoW crashes, you still have no access to get back to the desktop.

Click to expand...

Yeah i normally play WoW in the window but even then it crashes, i also get odd hexagonal shapes in the window from the game so i can't see my character for a while, this is why i thought it may be the Graphics card. And it's the whole syystem that crashes, not just the game.

It also crashes on my other games too, not just WoW. I tried downloading the above iCyclone but it unstuffed with no application in it????

A

Get istatpro first - christm has the link above for that also - it will show your CPU temps and fan speeds. If it's only taking about a minute or two to crash after starting the game, bring up Dashboard and take a look at istat every 15 seconds or so and see what's happening with your temps and fan speeds. According to my memory when I was playing, the fans kicked in pretty quick and went on up to around 6000 rpm. If the fans are working and the CPU temps are staying under that 75-80C, then it may very well be the card starting to suffer when it has to work for a living.

(Note: not sure at what temps the GPU should be staying at, don't think I really payed that much attention when I was playing WoW a year ago.)

Definitely sounds like a heat issue though. One of the fans going out would be much cheaper than the card. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Many thanks

Thanks to everyone, i downloaded some fan operating program from Versiontracker which let me boost up the power of the fans and it worked fine last night for a good few hours with no crash.

Cheers guys, I owe you one

Andy

Prolly as said above, too high cpu temps, the gpu producing those shapes are because of the overheating, artifacting isnt good.

Worth cleaning out the machine me thinks.