I need advice for trouble shooting computer that crashes during games

[ghastaphish]

Hey all, I've been having this problem with my new build where I'll be playing a game (so far Civ 5 and league of legends) and the screen will go black and the sound from the moniter will get caught in a loop. Sometimes this happens after a few minutes, sometimes an hour. I've been looking through the forums and have found a bunch of things that might be wrong, but at this point it seems there's so much that could be wrong, it's a bit overwhelming. I was wondering if someone could recommend a list of specific things to try, in order, so that I can isolate the problem and fix it. Thank you for any help!


Here's my build:
Win 7 64 bit
Powercolor Radeon 7850
Intel Pentium G860
Seagate 500GB HDD
Coolermaster Extreme PowerPlus 500W psu
Asrock H77m micro atx board
GSkill value series 8GB (2x4) RAM

and I'm using a Vizio 23inch HDTV for a moniter.

also, I've tried testing the temp on the cpu and gpu and it never goes above 40, so I dont think that's the issue. And I have the latest display driver for the GPU.

 

[tiny voices]

Your PSU is not very good quality. The 7850 shouldn't pull that much power, but that unit definitely doesn't make all 500w it claims.
Does this happen en any game, or only those two?

 

[ghastaphish]

So far those are the only ones I've tried, but it happens consistently with those two. I'm going to try it out on some new games as soon as I get the chance.