Why are certain games crashing my computer?

I'm running out of solutions and people to ask so maybe someone here can offer some assistance.

There are so far 6 games that crash my computer on a consistent basis:

• Blade & Soul
• World of Warcraft
• CS GO
• Heroes of the Storm
• Tera
• Warhammer Vermintide

Other games like Xcom 2, Mad Max, and League of Legends run fine.

The crash that happen is completely random. What happens is at any point while playing a game (the amount of time is inconsistent) both my monitors will just suddenly turn white, (yellow and green have happened before too) the sound either stutters loudly or still functions. There's been moments that during the crash I've still been able to talk to people I'm on Teamspeak with but the computer itself won't work.

I'm running Windows 10, but this issue was happening on Windows 7 as well, so I tried updating to see if it would help. It did for a bit, but now the crashes are back and possibly even more consistent. I've had an IT specialist look at it and attempt to run the PC hard in order to try and crash it, but was not able to.

All of the components are 3.5 years old about. Here's the rig:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770k CPU 3.50 GHz

Ram: 16GB

64 Bit operating system

Graphics Cad: GeFroce GTX 670

If anyone has even a semblance of any idea I'd be super grateful.

Try running one of those games with onboard graphics. Take the 670 out first. CSGO and WOW should be playabke with onboard graphics at low settings.

When did the problems start in the lifetime of your PC? Have you had problems to some extent for all 3.5 years or did they start at some definite point along the way?

When I had a similar style of crashing many years ago, it was a bad graphics card/drivers issue.

Have you done any GPU overclocking? That was a problem for me once upon a time. I slightly overclocked my card and it ran great on every game I owned. Then I ran into a couple games that would crash out after less than a half hour of play. It took me forever to figure out what was going on. Eventually I just dropped the card back to the stock clocks and never had another issue.

My initial thought if you can still talk to people after the crash, means that it's not your most base components at fault, but more likely a physical fault with the graphics card, like a corrupt memory sector maybe, which some games use and others don't. Could be a gfx driver corruption too, which is easier to test by cleaning and reinstalling them. That's not an expert opinion tho, just out of some personal experience.

@tennmuerti: I've done a clean wipe of the drivers with no success, so a physical fault may be it.

@htr10: I haven't done any overclocking

@woodyrson:Only started 2 or 3 months ago at most

Have you tried running the games without any ther programs running?

Sounds like an issue with graphics card if you can still use teamspeak after the crash. However, before getting a new card, you might want to consider the nuclear option and wiping your hdd and doing a complete reinstall. I saw earlier that you upgraded from 7 to 10, was that a clean install of 7 or an old install?

A lot, if not most, graphics cards sold these days are actually factory overclocked, and not tested well enough at the clock settings they're marketed to run at - causing the exact issues you're describing here. It's actually pretty common these days to have this problem. Seriously, find out the real reference clock speeds for the card you have, and set it to those (so you'd be downclocking your card). This has a high chance of fixing your issue.

@zombievac: I'll look into it, but would it be causing this problem even though many of these games have worked fine in the past for quite some time?

@flashflood_29: I have yeah :(

@arabes: The install of 7 was clean and I did update of 10, but I did a clean install of 10 a week ago to see if that would help.

@lackluster: Yes, definitely try it anyway. As driver updates come, the overclock can get less (or more!) stable. Also happens as the card ages as well. I'd bet a lot that this is your issue, or at least part of the issue!

Have you checked if the fan/fans on your graphics card are spinning? Checked to see if RPMs ramp up as temps increase (either with a monitoring tool or just listening to them spin up)?

From experience with Vermintide, that game is a beast to cpu's. Really taxes and heats them up. Not saying that is it. Just a personal observation.

Is it a solid colour that it crashes to or can you see columns if you look real close? Is a browser running in the background when the crashes happen? Do you have something in the PS/2 port? Can you try moving some USB equipment to other ports?

That's what I've got in my situation that'll be solved by a new graphics card, screen indicates columns blending together to form a near solid colour though mostly grey - browser helps make it crash - PS/2 port keyboard increases risk - Moving USB equipment made things better - still happens!

Have you physically checked your components inside? Usually I've noticed when my games start randomly crashing / bsod the first thing I check is to see how dirty it is inside. Cleaning out the gfx and inside sometimes does the trick. Could try also checking the drivers, maybe roll back the drivers to a more stable one if you are running any of the beta drivers.

@i_stay_puft: Yeah. I recently gave it a clean in hopes that it would help it did not. I'm not running any beta drivers, but should I maybe try beta drivers go in the opposite direction of what you said?

@somejerk: Fully solid colors, but usually each monitor is showing a different color. No browser running. There's nothing in the PS/2 port. I've moved around USBs haven't noticed anything. :(

@chu52: I definitely noticed that, but I spent 20 hours in the game before experiencing any crashes

@wraithtek: Fans are all in order :)

@zombievac: Welp. It seems like everything matches up for the reference from what I can see.

@lackluster said:

Temps (CPU, GPU)?

@wraithtek: Whoa. We might have a winner here I assumed since the fans were working it should be fine, but I downloaded OHM and the CPU/GPU temps went up to 80 degrees Celsius in a matter of minutes of playing Tera. However it was telling me that my fans were rotating at 1400 RPM which apparently around 40% power? Is there a way i can manipulate the speed/would that help?

Scan your PC for malware with Malwarebytes. Malware might using up a lot of RAM on your PC or causing issues that make files your game needs to access be deleted or not accessible.

If that doesn't work, follow the general troubleshooting steps for each game. If you aren't running them on lowest settings, the obvious next step would be to run it on lowest settings and see if it still crashes. If it doesn't, then your video card or not having drivers up to date may be to blame.

@lackluster: You can use MSI Afterburner to change fan speeds.

Seems like your CPU is overheating, have you tried re-seating your cpu? You could also check your bios and see if you have a cpu fan profile and set that to maximum so your fan runs 100% at all times, there are also some programs that are supposed to be able to control your cpu fan speed but I honestly never figured any out that didn't come with my mobo etc. Speedfan is one that people recommend i believe.

@oursin_360: I'm confused as to why the seating would be bad now? I tried having the fans at 100% at all times and it kept the cpu at average while playing Tera, but it still crashed...