Computer totally freezing while playing games

Swift_lawngnome

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Dec 4, 2011
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I have been having this problem pretty much since I got my computer from Cyberpower a few months now. I will be playing a game, then suddenly, my screen will either turn a certain color (usually black), or stop receiving the video signal and go into idle mode. My sound will loop what was playing before it froze, and the computer will be completely unresponsive, and I am forced to hold down the power button. Depending on the game it happens at different times. In Skyrim, it once happened after playing for about five minutes. In Minecraft, it froze once a few seconds after loading the world, another time after roughly 10-15 minutes of playing on a server. The strangest was once when playing Starcraft 2 with my friend. It froze, so I was about to hold down the power button, when I heard my friend talking again in Skype and the SC2 music continued playing. Then it continuously went in and out of the frozen state every few seconds, and I had to hard shut down. 

I haven't overclocked anything manually, but I have an EVGA Superclocked GPU. I have run Memtest86+ overnight with no errors. My idle CPU temps are around 27-38.

Specs:
CPU: Intel i5-2500k
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked
RAM: Unknown branding, 8GB 1600 
PSU: Raidmax RX-850AE

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 

Swift_lawngnome

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Sadly, no. I don't know anyone currently that has a gaming pc. My friends plan on building their own in a few months, but I am trying to fix this thing before May 15th for Diablo III.



Idles around 30-40 if I remember right. Will report back more accurately and with load temps either tomorrow or Friday.
 

GI_JONES

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I would suspect that Raidmax power supply. They have quite the reputation, and it isnt good. I once threw together a system of spare/leftover/donated parts, and ordered a cheap psu to power it. When done, and after loading windows 2000 (ya it was a while ago), my cd-rom drive wouldnt show up in my computer, and appeared dead (strange..it loaded the windows disk). Since all parts but the psu were used, I swapped out the cd-rom with a couple of others laying around, tried different molex plugs , swapped ram and nothing worked. Since it was just something to play with I set it aside. Eventually I inherited another old pc, and decided to try its psu in my frankenstein machine.. and it was all ok..the brand new $20 psu was the problem. Moral of the story: A bad PSU can cause all kinds of strange problems
 

Swift_lawngnome

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I am aware that they aren't very good, but if you look at the reviews of this particular PSU, they say that isn't as bad as most of their older units. I do still plan to replace it, but I want to be as sure as possible what the problem is before I spend that much money.

Something that really frightens me is that I read in a different thread that someone had seemingly the exact same problem as I, and ended up basically replacing everything in his computer and discovering that it was a faulty Mobo, which was ruining graphics cards. I don't think I can afford to replace these components in my computer. Any way to test my PSU, Mobo, or graphics card without another computer?
 

Swift_lawngnome

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Sorry for the double post, I don't mean to bump.
So I ran FurMark and Prime95 last night. My graphics card stayed around 65 C, while my CPU got up to 69 when I stopped it, and it seemed like it would've continued going up at least a few degrees. I know this GPU temp is acceptable, but I'm not so sure about the processor temp. I would also expect lower since I have an Asetek 510lc, which though it isn't great, is probably a decent step up from the stock cooler.