Games crashing- black screen & comp restarts

[Thakog]

Last April, I built my computer using Tom's value setup from the system builder.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/system-builder-marathon,2581.html

CPU AMD Athlon II X3 435
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA790GPT-UD3H
RAM G.Skill Ripjaws 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
Graphics 2 x Sapphire 100245 HDMI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS, 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 Gb/s
Case Antec Three Hundred Illusion
Power Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W
Optical LG Black 22X DVD Burner SATA Model GH22NS50


Now, years ago, I used to be pretty tech savvy. Not anymore. I put the computer together, and it worked ok, but lately I've been having problems with games crashing. The screen goes black, and the computer restarts itself. ATI overdrive says my graphics card temp stays between 26-35 C, so I don't think the cards are overheating.

Last week, I took one of the cards out, thinking that maybe something with the Crossfire had messed things up, but that didn't help. If anything, the crashes have become more frequent. Sometimes I can play for hours straight, other times it will crash right away.

Note, these are not graphics intensive games- I'm playing flash games on kongregate, civ 4, and league of legends.

I would rate the probability of user error as being high. Please help me, I'm really not the computer troubleshooter I once was.

 

[bystander]

I notice a bit of a red flag with the temperatures. It's very unlikely that the temps stay between 26-35C under load. If you are monitoring these temps from the Overdrive tab, that means you are likely playing a game in windowed mode. In windowed mode, CrossfireX does not function.

The temperature you are viewing is likely the card that is not underload. There is a drop down box that lets you select which card you are viewing, check both to see how the temps are.

 

[Thakog]

I'm alt tabbing from the games I mentioned to get the temps. However, I don't think any of those games are really stressing the video cards- much older computers can run them as well. The reason I posed here is because it does only seem to happen when my computer is running games.

 

[bystander]

Civ 4 and league of Legends will push the card a fair bit. They may be older, but they do put some load on the system. You should download MSI Afterburner or GPU-Z and log the temps, so you can go back after you alt tab out and see what the temps are hitting under full load.

However, it maybe a driver issue, or something else entirely.