Bitcoin Forum

I have noticed today that my pc automatically shuts down after around 10 minutes of generating bitcoins. I don't know what to do about such, since I want bitcoins (I dont mind if it takes longer to mine until I build a non-mining dedicated pc since I'm not at that stage yet)

Are you overheating your processor causing the thermal protection to shut down your system?

If we knew more about your computer, we would be able to provide more assistance.

I'm on an AMD 4800+ and 8600GT as my gpu, and I run bitcoin in generating mode with gpuminer running

You should try to monitor your gpu temperature.
There are a lot of tools to do so, google is your friend.

Oh and btw: afaik the 8600gt was the first Nvidia OpenCL capable card ever, so it`s probably very slow and might not support newer OpenCL versions.
Mabye that could have something to do with your crashes, too.

The culprit was that my cpu doesn't like extended 100% useage either from problematic power or overheatong. Also, I understand that the 8600GT is weak, but I am going to make a computer this summer. Right now my GPU produces about an average of 5.2 Mhash/s. I guess I will only use the gpu miner

I don't know the exact math for your setup, but you may be spending more on electricity attempting to generate bitcoins with an older GPU than it would be to simply purchase them.

Sometimes, you got to run in the red before you go in the black as long as I am willing to balance it within a period of time

I agree! Just making sure you were aware. I share your enthusiasm!

Odds are you won't make money off mining. I would guarantee it unless you're planning on  buying something with a lot of hashing power.

I ran my CPU for a week before my 5830 showed up...ended up with about .32 BTC. It seems more important to help, even a little bit, than to make a profit. :) Must be all of that @Home ethic... :P

Odds are without some serious hashing power you're not helping. You have the potential to, of course, but it isn't likely.

Yeah...I took calculus, too. :( The generation numbers I was seeing were probably responsible for more coal burning than it was worth. Now I am actually making a bit of progress.

On topic, though, a friend of mine had a similar problem. His computer kept crashing whenever he would check the "Generate Coins" option in the client. We had him uncheck that and get up to speed with the poclbm miner...he has a 4850 and was pulling down 60-65 mhash/sec once he was configured correctly...but his GPU still climbed up over 110 degrees and would still crash his computer.

Turns out he may need a new mobo after all of that...it doesn't run the fans right, and even with the GPU fan running at 100%, I doubt that would be enough to keep everything cool. That much heat is just not good for mining...or anything else.

We used to run a lot of @Home stuff, and I'm wondering if it's a similar load on the system...never had problems like that with it.