This only started happening recently, and I haven't made any hardware changes in the last several months. I'm hoping someone here can give me some advice, as I have little idea as to what my problem is. When I'm playing a game (I've only noticed it with one game in particular, Rift, but then again this is the only graphically taxing game I've played recently), occasionally my screen will go black, all sounds will stop, and everything will be unresponsive as if the computer had just turned off even though the machine is still running. I can't do anything when it is in this state, including turn it off. The reset and power buttons do nothing (even when holding them down), and the only way to turn off the computer is to flip the switch on my power supply, which makes me cringe every time I have to.
As I said, I've only had this happen when playing Rift, but haven't tested any other games that would stress my PC. Sometimes I can play the entire day without any problems, and sometimes it happens the instant that I hit the character selection screen (and I had it happen twice within five minutes or so). It's never happened while in Windows.
Here's what I've tried/checked (not much as I'm not sure where to start):
PC specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor, 3.20 GHz
HIS AMD Radeon HD 6950 2Gb Video card
Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard
FPS Group Everest 800 Power Supply
OCZ Reaper HPC DDR3 4gb (2x2gb) memory
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA hard drive
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series SV300S37A/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III SSD
Asus VE278Q 27" LED LCD Monitor - 16:9 - 2 ms (main display)
Hanns.G HZ251H 24.6" LCD Monitor - 16:9 - 2 ms (secondary display)
Thanks for reading. I'd really appreciate any help anyone can give.
As I said, I've only had this happen when playing Rift, but haven't tested any other games that would stress my PC. Sometimes I can play the entire day without any problems, and sometimes it happens the instant that I hit the character selection screen (and I had it happen twice within five minutes or so). It's never happened while in Windows.
Here's what I've tried/checked (not much as I'm not sure where to start):
■ I updated my video card drivers to the most recent release. They were a few versions behind before the update, but the patch didn't seem to fix anything.
■ I've checked both the CPU and graphics card temperatures directly after the PC stops responding, and both seem far below any unsafe levels. I thought that overheating might be an issue seeing as we're in the middle of summer now, but after looking at the readings I see no reason to think that temperature is the problem.
PC specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor, 3.20 GHz
HIS AMD Radeon HD 6950 2Gb Video card
Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard
FPS Group Everest 800 Power Supply
OCZ Reaper HPC DDR3 4gb (2x2gb) memory
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA hard drive
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series SV300S37A/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III SSD
Asus VE278Q 27" LED LCD Monitor - 16:9 - 2 ms (main display)
Hanns.G HZ251H 24.6" LCD Monitor - 16:9 - 2 ms (secondary display)
Thanks for reading. I'd really appreciate any help anyone can give.