This is the part I dislike about PC gaming, for some reason I always find some kind of weird problem.
Just built a new set based on Bitphoenix Prodigy (sexy!), went a bit overkill for components thinking in having a good base and changing GPU in two/three years:
PB SK-1155 ASUS P8H77-I mini-ITX Chipset H77
PCI-E ATI HD 7970 3GB GDRR5 Sapphire Ghz Edition
SSD 2.5 SATA3 240GB Kingston SH103S3/240G HyperX 3K
HDD 3.5 SATA 3.0 1TB WD WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 7200rp
2 DDR3 PC1600 8 GB KINGSTON HyperX blu
1 CPU LGA 1155 Intel Core Ivy i7-3770
PSU Aerocool Templarius Imperator 650w
A capable system I believe, I play on tv so 720p is good enough and I will jump to 1080p next year maybe.
I install everything, all new, Windows 8 64 bits. Looking good. Install Steam and go for Sleeping Dogs as my inauguration trip. Keep looking good, all at maximum, rock solid framerate, looks stunning, enjoy the first hours... the system resets.
Bios tell me something about a voltage protection, check forums and several sources indicate it´s a feature from Asus motherboards that can be ignored, so I deactivate it. Keep playing some hours, another reset. Check bios and check an option that seems to be OCing the GPU (not sure what it does), when I activate it the system automatically resets from bios, so I make sure it keeps deactivated. Some hours, another reset.
I open the box, the only part that is not new is a cable I used to connect the PSU to one of the ventilators, so I quit it. I rearrange the cables to be 100% sure none is touching the CPU fan (I had problems with this before).
Seems that did the trick, but this morning got another reset. However I saw that the system updated Windows, so I figured the OS forced the shutdown. I change the options to ask me before installing anything, install the rest of important updates and keep going, all perfect for three hours.
This afternoon I slept a bit and I left the game running to see if it kept stable, when I woke up the system had reset. Pissed off. I start again Sleeping Dogs, 5 hours playing and zero problems.
Crossing my fingers now. If I have another reset I'll try to change the drivers before I initiate the painful process of checking piece by piece what is causing the trouble, but I hope I don't need to because if it´s something so random that it can be working with no problem for five hours, is going to be a bitch to test.
Sleeping Dogs is great at least, glad I waited for the new computer, it looks spectacular.