Black Screen when playing games

[phantasyhax]

i5 2500k - stock cpu fan but figured it would be ok due to no OC atm
z68 extreme4
GSkill 4gb x2 1600 1.5v - in the two blue slots on mobo
R6950 Twin Frozr 3 pe/oc 850mhz
Corsair 750w PSU
Asus 24in LED/LCD monitor

- New computer less than 2 weeks old... problems have been happening since i first tried playing a game
- Only overclock is on the graphics card from factory
- GPU never exceeds 58 C
- Maintains 60 fps on ultra in BF3 then just goes black and forced to restart via case button
- Does it occasionally in Wow and other games
- All drivers are up to date as far as i can find... looked for hours for the latest ones

only thing i can find wrong is the memory isn't on the asrock supported list although i was certain i checked before buying... regardless...

starts up games just fine 5 mins or so in it locks up... audio is looped... nothing works cept restart button on case

side note i can play dvds, streaming video, music just fine all day

are there some settings i need to tweak? bad gpu?

 

[wonder44]

Hi.

First i suggest updating you video & mobo drivers to the latest version.
Second make sure RAM stick 1 is in the closest slot to the CPU, & the second stick the third slot away from the cpu. ex: slot 1=taken slot 2=empty slot 3=taken slot 4=empty. Also run a RAM test for errors: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Memory-Tweak/MemTest.shtml

as this could be causing the problem. Also try using just 1 stick of RAM if it happens again turn off your system & try the other RAM stick.

And try running some kind of benchmarking software to see if it freezes up as well.

If its not your RAM then it may be your GPU.

Also what OS are you running?

 

[ichihaifu]

Its clearly the RAMs at fault.
As person above said, make sure they are placed properly.
If they are, try to run the games with only one stick attached at time, for both sticks and both slots (this requires 4 system reboots, but is surefire way).
Chances are one of the sticks is faulty, or one of the RAM slots is doa.

 

[phantasyhax]

- Drivers are as up to date as i can find... 11/18/2011 i believe is the date on it

- Ram is in slot 1 & 3 as u said

- Downloaded Memtest and has been running for a good 30 minutes and no errors... will continue to run it... opened up 4 windows as suggested by program 3 testing 2047mb and a fourth testing what was left

- Ran the MSI Kombuster benchmark and GPU burn in tests and everything runs good... 30fps avg on the extreme test and 330fps on the gpu burn in... never going over 60 C

- I am currently running windows 7 64-bit

- Tried running the game with only 1 stick seemed to be doing good for awhile (around and hour) then it crashed again... will do more swapping around tonight

 

[andywork78]

for your graphic go back to factory setting.
try that because from your test ram is ok to me.
May be O.C. on agp is not stable for some reason.

 

[phantasyhax]

sorry andy just wanted to clarify what u mean by go back to factory settings... i havent changed anything on the cpu or gpu since i installed them... just plugged everything in and its doing this black screen stuff

 

[phantasyhax]

yea i have tried everything i know how to do... surfed every site i know of and nothing...

can play games for a random amount of time now sometimes hours sometimes minutes...

just want to know what to send back or do to try and fix this