Mac Restarts While Video Editing

Hello. My friend is a video editor and he has one of those older mac desktop computers from early 2008. He has an 16 GB RAM, 2.7 ghz processor, mac os x lion 10.7.5, and nvidia graphics card,.

Whenever he does he video editing, after 15 minutes it restarts. So I took his computer and my first initial thought is memory. I used Rember to see if that is the issue. However, the results PASS
Also when I was doing the diagnosis, the test lasted for hours with no restart interruptions. The log was returning OK's, I had a feeling that the probability of having memory problems is relatively low.

So can anyone let me know what is going on, and tell me what is the issue?

So can anyone let me know what is going on, and tell me what is the issue?

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My guess is that he could have a bad or intermittent graphics card. Video editing puts a lot of pressure on the graphics and if the card is old and possibly failing, it will cause the reboot. Or, because of the video editing the machine overheats and that causes a restart. Checking the memory eliminated that as a possible cause. If it's an older machine like you say those are the two likely suspects. Which machine does he have? Can you be more descriptive? Click on the Apple in the upper left corner and select "About this Mac" and post it here.

And, welcome to our forums.

Or, because of the video editing the machine overheats and that causes a restart.

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This would be an area I would explore as well. I had a couple older iMac's from 2008/2009 that had a similar issue. Replaced the thermal paste on the GPU & GPU heatsink…and resolved the issue.

But as chscag also mentioned…could always be a failing graphics card.

Also as chscag mentioned…let us know what exact model Apple desktop you're talking about (Mac-Mini. iMac, Mac Pro)?

- Nick