I had a friend help build me a computer mainly for gaming here are the specs:
GeForce 68oo GT 512MB video cards (x2)
AMD 64 FX-55 ATHLON
1GB DDR memory (x4)
74GB/WD 10,000 RPM 8MB Hrad drive (x2)
MB ABIT FATALITY AN8-SLI NF4 RTL motherboard
windows xp professional edition
500W power supply

now I know the memory is not going to be utilized by the operating system and I'm sure there are more obvious problems but...
I have the video cards set up for the sli configuration or whatever its called... but the games I'm trying to play are having some serious problems, as in they don't run at all... (empire earth 2 for one ex.) the computer won't shut down the whole way, some lights stay on that should be off and the power light stays on also... and it makes this annoying whistling sound right after it starts to load windows. I was wondering I could fix some of the problems by replacing the power supply with a 600W certified for dual video cards... welll any help would be great because my friend and I don't really know enough about building computers and I think I may have screwed myself on this one...
thanks

That machine's a beast. You really splashed out there. No game is even going to test that machine.

Anyway, that's a lot of problems you've got there. My advice might just to be unplug everything and start again. It's often a good idea to do a bench build (build the PC outside of the case, on a suitable surface) to ensure everything works before shoving it in the case.

I don't think the power pack would cause these problems - if the power pack was causing issues the chances are the PC just wouldn't run, not power lights it shouldn't be. I would guess for the power light lighting up etc. that you simply wired it up incorrectly to the motherboard. Double check the wiring with the manual.

Do you get any errors when the games start up or do they just not do anything? Does it even do something crazy like shutdown?

As for the whistling, do you have any idea what component is emitting the noise?


I'm sure some of the more hardware inclined experts here will be able to answer this question better than me. Stu - this is where you enter...

Wow, nice machine!

Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with gaming as most of my time is spent on business machines etc but I'll have a go!

A few things to consider.

Have you installed all the mobo drivers on the system, that came on the CD?

Is the OS up-to-date with the latest patches.

4 gig of ram is nice, but XP or your mobo may not recognise all of it. I would suggest as a testing excersise, remove 1 stick of ram at a time and see if anything works better e.g 4gb -> 3gb -> 2gb ->1gb. Also check the motherboard manual to see maximum ram.

Also try running the games with only one graphics card installed after this, the process of elimination shoud identify what is the problem.

As for empire earth II, I don't know the game, but check this link out:
http://www.empireearth2.com/uk/downloads.html

There's an update for the game and an XP game advisor that might give you more help.

Good luck - don't follow my signature advice (below)

Well I'm starting to think that the motherboard might have shorted out somewhere along the line and might be causing some of the bigger problems. Two of the fans in the back are not working now and I know they had been on before and the whistling sound started around the same time the fans went out.

As for the games some of the lower quality ones work fine although they still freeze once in a while too, the higher graphics freeze every time and the others won't even load the game. It gives me an error telling me that the hardware may be over heating or may not meet the min requirements. But when the games do freeze the computer won't respond, I have to shut it down and start it up again.

I think I have all the drivers updated and I checked the motherboard cd and everything is installed there, I also checked for updated for games but they are not helping either.

I'm going to try rebuilding on an open area and see what happens with that and the RAM has me wondering because its running on 3GB now so I'm going to play around with that too.

Well thanks for the help and feel free to leave more... I could use it

My advice may not be very popular with the rest of this forum but I'm just speaking from experience. I had a computer once that would freeze at random times while installing windows. This was a VERY high spec machine as well and in the end the problem turned out to be the power supply. The solution was not to get a bigger PSU but a better brand. I made the mistake of using Thermaltake (which I thought at the time was a good brand but was later informed of my error) and when I switched to an Antec I no longer had any problems. My original PSU was a 530w and when I was testing I actually moved down to a 400w so it wasn't just an issue with enough power it was an issue with power quality. I highly doubt this will fix all your problems but it could possibly help with the freezing.