Black screen + computer freezing during gaming???

[FooteNasty]

| i5 2500k | Gigabyte 7850 2GB | 8GB G.SKILL DDR3 | GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 | Samsung F3R 1 TB HDD | Antec 902

Okay so pretty big problem here that I'm slightly upset about. A few weeks back, randomly playing MW2, my monitor loses signal, screen goes black, and computer completely locks up, have to shut off with power button. Think nothing of it, try again, same thing, Check for new drivers, already have them, try again, same thing. Uninstall all drivers, install new ones, same thing. Pull up Catalyst Control Center while attempting to play MW2, BF3, WoW, etc and notice my temp is skyrocketing. Check my video card and notice my fan is broken, bummer. It should be noted that I could never get more than 5 minutes into a game without this happening but only when gaming on any game, not during browsing, YouTube, etc.

So Black Friday rolls around and I buy a 7850 2gb that was on sale, since my fan was broken in my old card. Finally arrives today, install it, update all drivers, super excited that I can get back to gaming after about a month or so, get about 10 minutes into BF3 and BAM, screen goes black, sound is frozen on a gunshot, and computer freezes. I have now completely exhausted all of my little computer knowledge and have nowhere to go. Is my monitor bad? Motherboard? Did I miraculously get 2 bad cards back to back? What do you guys think?

P.S. power Supply is about 3 years old, not sure how to tell if it is functioning 100% - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151034

 

[smorizio]

start checking that the mb bios is up to date the x68 and z77 have a lot of bug fixes for cpu and ram code. use cpu-z check the ram speed and timing. the i-2500 cpu spec for ram is 1333. you can run 1600 but it outside of the the ram controller on a sb chip. check that the ram on the mb qal list. i would run memtest to see if there a bad stick of ram then run open hardware monitor and prime95 to see that the cpu fan is working and the heat sink on right. idle temps should be 30-40c. under load 50-60c. 70-80 starts geting close to the cpu max temp. the power supply is a two rail unit with two small 17a rails. it may be that the video card is pulling more amps then the rails can give the system. look at the wattage of the gpu and devide by 12 that be your amp load.

 

[rolli59]

Could be caused by ram, run memtest. PSU should be fine.