Hello chaps!
Got a predicament here...
My computer crashes whenever I play video games. Common problem, I know, but I have done my homework on this and I have fully exhausted my computer knowledge.
My specs (courtesy of Speccy):
OS -- Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU -- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 @ 2.93Ghz (NOT overclocked)
RAM -- 8.00GB Dual Channel DDR2 @ 399 Mhz (6-6-6-18)
MOBO -- Dell Inc. 0CK520
GPU -- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (EVGA) (x2 in SLI Setup for dual monitor support)
HDDs -- 596GB Hitachi HDT721064SLA SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
698GB Seagate ST375064 0AS SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
149GB Western Digital WDC WD16 00ADFS-75SLR SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
931GB Seagate ST310005 28AS SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
PSU -- Dell Model N1000P-00 1000W Max
The problem:
Computer runs fine when browsing internet or doing standard stuff of the sorts, but when playing a game (and I mean any game at all, from Total War to Minecraft to Fallout 4) it will crash. The interesting part is the type of crash that occurs. The game will lock up for a second or two, then the screen goes black. Never a blue screen of death just a black screen with a "No Signal" to the monitor. Tricky part that I can't seem to find anywhere else is what the audio does. It doesn't necessarily stutter or repeat but it kinda slows down? I suppose you could call it stuttering but to me it sounds like it goes into slow motion before cutting out entirely.
The computer remains powered and doesn't shutoff until I manually do a hard shut down, and the whole computer locks up. I lose signal to the main monitor that was displaying the game, but never the secondary monitor: I can still see the desktop/whatever is open on the second screen after the crash.
Tests that I Tried:
memTestx86 -- On all 4 RAM sticks both together and individually - each is clean and computer has been able to run it for 10+ hours straight without finding any problems. No crashes.
furMark -- Ran for a couple hours on most stressful settings, no problems occured and no crashes either..
Prime95 -- Crashed here a few times. Of the 3 torture tests that it offers, it crashed during 2 of them. For the "Small FFTs (max heat, FPU stress, data fits in L2 cache, RAM nhot tested much)" it didn't seem to crash after about an hour or two although im gonna test it tonight to see if it can go longer. The other two tests that focus on max power consumption and the blend test caused it to crash pretty quickly (less than an hour).
Almost forgot to mention: Im 99% sure that it is hardware related -- I wiped my computer after a long night of frustration and ended up reinstalling my OS from scratch on all empty HDDs... Still had the problems of game crashing.
So the way I see it, my GPU is clean, my RAM is clean, not heat related because it never exceeded 80C during the tests and crashes around ~56C. My first guess is PSU but I want some better insight before I go off buying a new PSU and begin tearing apart my tower.
Thank you all for the help! Any useful insight is welcomed because at this point i'm willing to try anything.
Got a predicament here...
My computer crashes whenever I play video games. Common problem, I know, but I have done my homework on this and I have fully exhausted my computer knowledge.
My specs (courtesy of Speccy):
OS -- Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU -- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 @ 2.93Ghz (NOT overclocked)
RAM -- 8.00GB Dual Channel DDR2 @ 399 Mhz (6-6-6-18)
MOBO -- Dell Inc. 0CK520
GPU -- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (EVGA) (x2 in SLI Setup for dual monitor support)
HDDs -- 596GB Hitachi HDT721064SLA SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
698GB Seagate ST375064 0AS SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
149GB Western Digital WDC WD16 00ADFS-75SLR SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
931GB Seagate ST310005 28AS SCSI Disk Device (SATA)
PSU -- Dell Model N1000P-00 1000W Max
The problem:
Computer runs fine when browsing internet or doing standard stuff of the sorts, but when playing a game (and I mean any game at all, from Total War to Minecraft to Fallout 4) it will crash. The interesting part is the type of crash that occurs. The game will lock up for a second or two, then the screen goes black. Never a blue screen of death just a black screen with a "No Signal" to the monitor. Tricky part that I can't seem to find anywhere else is what the audio does. It doesn't necessarily stutter or repeat but it kinda slows down? I suppose you could call it stuttering but to me it sounds like it goes into slow motion before cutting out entirely.
The computer remains powered and doesn't shutoff until I manually do a hard shut down, and the whole computer locks up. I lose signal to the main monitor that was displaying the game, but never the secondary monitor: I can still see the desktop/whatever is open on the second screen after the crash.
Tests that I Tried:
memTestx86 -- On all 4 RAM sticks both together and individually - each is clean and computer has been able to run it for 10+ hours straight without finding any problems. No crashes.
furMark -- Ran for a couple hours on most stressful settings, no problems occured and no crashes either..
Prime95 -- Crashed here a few times. Of the 3 torture tests that it offers, it crashed during 2 of them. For the "Small FFTs (max heat, FPU stress, data fits in L2 cache, RAM nhot tested much)" it didn't seem to crash after about an hour or two although im gonna test it tonight to see if it can go longer. The other two tests that focus on max power consumption and the blend test caused it to crash pretty quickly (less than an hour).
Almost forgot to mention: Im 99% sure that it is hardware related -- I wiped my computer after a long night of frustration and ended up reinstalling my OS from scratch on all empty HDDs... Still had the problems of game crashing.
So the way I see it, my GPU is clean, my RAM is clean, not heat related because it never exceeded 80C during the tests and crashes around ~56C. My first guess is PSU but I want some better insight before I go off buying a new PSU and begin tearing apart my tower.
Thank you all for the help! Any useful insight is welcomed because at this point i'm willing to try anything.
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