I can play a game for about an hour but then the game and all other applications close and the computer shuts down. It isn't a crash, windows actually shuts down (the little window comes up saying "windows is shutting down"). My first thought was that maybe I had something overheating but I downloaded a program to monitor temps and my CPU wasn't going above 40C under load and my northbridge/gpu weren't getting that hot either. I checked the BIOS and the automatic shutdown for the processor was disabled so it isn't that. Is there some windows feature that I am unaware of that is causing this to happen? The computer is recently reformatted and I wasn't having this problem before I reformatted.

AMD 64+ 3000 venice
dfi lanparty ultra d
ocz 1 gb gold el
x850 xt PE

have you checked for viruses? do you get any error messages? have you correctly installed all your drivers? (especialy audio/video)

no viruses or error messages. it is my brothers computer and he did the reformat though so I suppose he might have messed up on the drivers. ill check and get back to you