Never ending busy mode; what is going on?

[caravel]

The temperature coming from the motherboard thermistor seems a bit too high. What is your CPU temperature?

The HDs seem ok as far as I can tell.

The GPU seems to be running a bit hot. Is that under load? Cooling varies from one card to the next, but a lot of cards are fitted with substandard coolers. Check it for dust and debris and try running with the case side off.

[frogbeastegg]

The temperature coming from the motherboard thermistor seems a bit too high. What is your CPU temperature?

Had to check that with a different tool. It's fluctuating between 48 and 49 degrees C.

The GPU seems to be running a bit hot. Is that under load? Cooling varies from one card to the next, but a lot of cards are fitted with substandard coolers. Check it for dust and debris and try running with the case side off.

It's under very mild load. I've been reinstalling my games, starting them up to sort out the settings, playing them for a few minutes to check they work correctly and then quitting to install another. Time is also spent on downloading and applying patches, so there's quite some gap between each game launch.

The card has its own headsinks and fans; they're big enough to make the card double size. It's a BFG version of the 8800 so they should be decent. The card's positioned right next to the rear case fan. The two hard drives sit next to the front fan.

I gave the machine a clean out when I swapped the raptor drive in.

I should add that it's so hot here that I'm sweatingly slightly just sitting here. Horrible. Britain is supposed to be cold; all this warmth and sun isn't natural.

[caravel]

It's a strange one... definitely keep an eye on your temps from now on and run with the case side off until the weather breaks.

[Xiahou]

A couple of things...

First, check Event Viewer- look in the System and Application logs for any events from around the same time as your lockups. Let us know if you see anything interesting. (If you don't know where to find Event Viewer, just do a "Start->Run Eventvwr.msc")

Second, you might want to try something like Speedfan to look at the SMART data for your second drive. It has an option for a "detailed" report that opens in a web page. SMART data is no guarantee, but the data it tracks can often predict hard drive failures and Speedfan also aggregates this data into drive performance and health percentages.

[Whacker]

I will also mention from direct experience the problems that a seemingly-good-but-really-bad HDD can cause.

I've had my self-built system for about 2 years now. Several months after I had it put together and broken in, I started noticed weird problems. Inconsistent lockups, weird software behavior, freezes needing hard reboots. This progressed and finally got to the point where I literally had to reset BIOS settings after every restart, because they system would detect things wrong AND it wouldn't save settings no matter what. Not only that, I was starting to fear that power supply was going bad and had caused me to already RMA the mobo once AND my expensive RAM. I was on my 3rd pair of RAM sticks and gnashing my teeth. All of this lead me to believe that my entire system was fried or about to be fried.

Finally, about 2 months ago, the HDD finally breathed it's last and started the repetitive clunk of death noise. Got my new 1TB HDD and plugged it in, and suddenly every problem I've ever had with the box disappeared. I mean every. Single. One. BIOS works perfectly. No random lock-ups after marathon gaming that heats my video card up to nukuler temps. No wierd RAM-based CRC or consistency errors. I've never seen anything like this happen in my 15+ years in working heavily with PCs.

All of that headache and heartache because of a single stupid HDD that was bad but kept working for a year or more.

So the short, short version is don't trust that HDD. It could be bad but still "working", AND it could be causing a lot of problems that may appear to be symptomatic of other hardware problems, like PSU issues. Just something to think about as you troubleshoot.