Thread: Lag then Computer Resets When Gaming

well.. the game is Dota.. and it usually never lags when i play it.

The problem however is that recently playing the game, it will lag about 10 minutes into the game after playing smoothly. The game will then continuously lag and spike and it becomes unbareble to play. This usually only happened whenever i got my internet capped, but since yesterday my internet has been back to normal and it still happens. About 20-30 minutes after the lag kicks in, my computer would just reset.

Help would be appreciated

I have about 10 gigs of memory left
Pentium 4CPU
3ghz
1.5 gb of ram.
Radeon 9600 (i think)

Overheating.

Is there an explanatoin as to why it only started happening recently and i have not changed any component aspects of the computer?

Fans get old, maybe the vents are clogged up, maybe you've put the computer in a place with inadequete air flow, or maybe you're having really good weather and your computer was built on the cheap and in not able to cope with the rise in temp.

Basically you tell us, the problem sounds very much like overheating, its up to you to tell us why.
Open up the case and have a look at the fan while it is running, is it slow?

Fans and physical drives are pretty much subject to wear and tear. As 98 pointed out, dust can accumulate in the device and reduce air flow.
Overheated parts will expand (cause heat does that, duh) and will not operate properly (thus the slowdown) or the device will simply downclock itself to reduce heat production and thus cause slowdowns.
The system will reset because your computer deemed it unsafe to continue operating and will shut down or reset.

the fans seem to b fine... so apart from them what else could b "wearing and tearing". My graphics card? It's pretty old.. a radeon 9600

Just because the fans work, doesn't mean they are sufficient.

Any attempty on "overclocking" your processor, memory, video card?

Get this,
http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php
Normally you should be able to access the sensors, unless you got some crapy motherboard.

Open up the game, play for about 15minutes (just before when it should reset automaticaly) and check the temps, then post them here..

Uh.. power supply issues?

Anyway... at this point.. has his computer gone into the nether worlds already?