BSOD when playing games help! Newbie here

[sutton94]

Hey, so after finally getting through building my new PC, I can't seem to run any games for longer than 30 minutes as I get a BSOD as in the image



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Not sure if this is relevant but the games that have done this is Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Far Cry 2 through Steam within about 30 mins. Guild Wars 2 (not through Steam) hasn't given me the BSOD although that may be because I've been playing it in short bouts.

 

[kajabla]

Full specs, please.
Have you overclocked anything?
Check your temperatures in-game, though high temps don't generally cause BSODs. Use MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision for the GPU (Precision's for Nvidia) and Realtemp or HWMonitor for the CPU.

 

[Guest]

Your question needs more information to be properly diagnosed. Your question as written is like saying your car's check engine light is on and showing a picture of the light without describing what kind of car it is. A BSOD Stop 124 error is a generic error message that could be many things. I would start with updating your video and sound card drivers if this happens mostly when playing games.

 

[sutton94]

Sorry about that, I completely forgot to put my specs up!
I haven't overclocked - specs are:
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64
650W Corsair Enthusiast Series 9020
Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO,
Pioneer DVR-S19LBK 24x DVD±R, 12x
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance
Intel Core i5 3570K,1155, Ivy Bridge
2GB Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce 3X,
Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H, Intel Z77,
Caviar Blue 500gb Hard drive

 

[sutton94]

I updated my drivers once my PC was installed, yet how can I check I did this correctly/have the latest drivers?

 

[sutton94]

GPU temp in Battlefield Bad Company 2 goes up to about 66C and CPU maximum around 52C, I checked this just before I got the BSOD again

 

[kajabla]

Those temperatures are fine, so my next guess is going to be RAM. Download Memtest, which you can get at www.memtest.org. It and other memory testing programs must be burned to a CD which you boot from, like an OS, to run tests.
Before you do that, though, you may be able to find a RAM problem simply by playing games with one stick installed at a time. How reliably do you BSOD? I know you said you "can't seem to play longer than half an hour," but does it really die every single time? Does it always take a significant amount of play time, or does it ever crash quickly? Is it always in a game, or does it ever go down during normal desktop use?