Hello, so often when I play vidya games my computer freezes up and the audio starts going crazy and I eventually have to restart. The GPU is relatively new, and is running cool. Max temp whilst playing crysis 2 at very high settings is 60C. As a result, I don't think it's doing this because of overheating.

Specs:

Intel(R) Core™ i5-2500K 3.30 GHz 6M Intel Smart Cache LGA1155

1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

8GB (2GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Corsair XMS Gaming Memory with Heat Spreader)

[CrossFireX] GigaByte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard

850 Watt Corsair TX PSU

EVGA GeForce GTX 570 1280 MB

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

How new is the rest of your system? Have you checked the manufacturers website to make sure your RAM is officially supported?

Your GPU may have been defective out of the box.

Other than that, I'm not sure what could be causing this. You could try driver updates, and if all else fails, a fresh Windows install.

The memory looks like it's supported. The rest of the system is about 11 months old. The thing is, this is the 3rd GPU I've gone through. I originally ordered the system from cyberpower, and their gpu was defective. I did an RMA and the 2nd GPU was also defective, so I just bought a new one and sold the one they sent back. I've been kinda having little problems here and there with this system since I've bought it.

Oh, also, I seem to be able to play battlefield 3 multiplayer for hours on end with absolutely no trouble. But when I play WoW with a music player in the background or pandora streaming, a few hours down the road my screen turns off and on like it had a critical error. All my drivers are up to date, I don't know what it could be.

This is definitely an overheating issue. You might want to check to make sure the heatsink is properly seated on the CPU, and there is an appropriate amount of thermal paste properly applied on there.

If those don't work, try dialing back the CPU speed in BIOS.

@psylah: Could you give me a clue on how to do that in BIOS? Sorry, I'm not the most computer literate person.

Watching CPU temps is a good idea, but if you can play Battlefield 3 for so long without issues, I don't necessarily see CPU heat undoubtedly being the culprit. But maybe.

@Osaladin said:

@psylah: Could you give me a clue on how to do that in BIOS? Sorry, I'm not the most computer literate person.

It's difficult to give specific instructions, since different motherboards use different BIOS sometimes, but here's a link with a short, general description http://www.ehow.com/how_5171478_change-processor-speed.html

Update: My CPU temperature was 60C after an hour of Crysis 2. Is this too hot?

@Osaladin: no, thats fine.

how's the motherboard and graphics card tempwise? if you dont have a program to monitor that, check hwmonitor out.

another idea would be to run memtest.

its a program that runs when you start your computer off an usb stick, it stress tests ram to see it it is suffering from errors.

@Osaladin: It's been a while since I've done anything with temps, but 60 sounds a bit high for the CPU. That is under load though, so I dunno. If you run something like Prime95, it'll load your CPU fully and you can see if that gets crashy.

GPUs tend to run hot, and that's ok, but I'm not sure your CPU should be that warm. Also, there is no sense in trying to alter the speed of your CPU unless if you've been overclocking.

The easy solution to see if it is heat is the open the the side of your case, point a fan inside, and then do whatever it does that makes your computer crashy.

Try reinstalling your motherboard's sound drivers.

@MAGZine: 60 celcius is not enough for a cpu to start freaking out and make applications crash.

if you've taken a look on the stock sandy and ivy bridge coolers they are incredibly tiny. 60 is nothing out of the ordinary.

one of my buddies unknowingly ran his processor at 100c idle for three weeks, and it occasionally crashed during starcraft matches. ( thats when i told him to check his temps )

@MAGZine: I have not overclocked anything at all. I'm downloading my motherboard's sound drivers atm, will report back if that has any change. I'll try running the memtest later tonight.

@Devildoll: My GPU is idle at 35C right now. Maximum it reaches 60C, usually though during gaming it stays at around 55C.

@Osaladin: Any blue screens? If so, what errors?

When you reboot after you crash, can you check the system logs under Administrative Tools? Are there entries that happen just before the crash?

I like to use Prime95 as a stability tool.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

Don't register, just use "Just Testing" and set it to as many cores as you have (4) and let it go at it for a few hours. If you can run it overnight, generally, I'd say you have a stable system; at least CPU and memory wise. If you have errors, check the log it generates.

There's memtest, as well.

And just because "Freezing and audio goes crazy" can be a lot of things, just for fun, Speedfan has a utility that'll read your drive SMART and generate a report for you. Your system has some really solid components, but hard drives suck and a dying one can do all sorts of goofy crap. (I have really bad luck with Maxtor reliability. Seagate reliability went to shit when they became one with Maxtor. I only buy WD Black/Raptors for long term use and WD Blues for my NAS and have no problems, personally. But at work, the WD Blues/Greens die pretty often. Toshiba Deskstar? I remember when they were IBM Deathstars, exploding into lil glass bits.)

And with any software you download, make sure it's not trying to install the Dogpile Bansai Buddy Edition Search Toolbar and Coupon Printer now with 110% more AOL 2012 with Facebook Points Rewards Plus.

Actually! Most important thing to do!

System, Advanced System Settings, Startup and Recovery. Turn off "Automatically reboot". That way, the next time it crashes, you can list what the error is and we can go from there.

Just take it into the shop. Sure, it'll cost you, but with computers its usually better to be safe than sorry.

60 Celsius on both the CPU and GPU is perfectly normal under load so this is not overheating issues. Just for reference your GTX 570 are set up to a maximum of 97 Celsius, and the I5 2500K to around 82.6 Celsius. Nvidia just recently released a new WHQL driver for their cards if you haven't tested that out yet.

@Zelyre: Ok, so no blue screens, the video just freezes, and any audio I have going in the background or in the game, will freeze too, and continue at a very slow pace, like one sound a time. The first time it happened I thought it would fix itself, and kept it like that for 5 minutes, when nothing changed, I restarted my computer. Now I just restart right away, but I never get any errors. On startup, the black screen comes up that asks me if I want to run in safe mode because of an unknown critical error, I always choose run windows normally.

My "Automatically reboot" is already set to off.

Also, I'm very cautious about downloading bloatware and what not, my computer is clean as a whistle.

Seconding a memory check. Also a Prime95 run might help if you've got some monitors running to see how hot is hot. Honestly, a good HDD diag might be on order too.

@Osaladin: Try giving it a blanket and some warm cocoa!

Sounds like a hard drive issue. My bet is on HDD or Memory, but it could be the CPU too.

Check your voltages and your power connections. PSUs are the most likely component to fail in your PC after fans and maybe hard disks. Your BIOS should report voltages, as will monitoring apps like Speedfan. Make sure they're within +/- 5% of the expected value.

@FritzDude said:

60 Celsius on both the CPU and GPU is perfectly normal under load so this is not overheating issues. Just for reference your GTX 570 are set up to a maximum of 97 Celsius, and the I5 2500K to around 82.6 Celsius. Nvidia just recently released a new WHQL driver for their cards if you haven't tested that out yet.

Good to know thank you.

I'm running Prime 95 atm, hoping to let it run for a while. Can I still use my computer whilst it's testing?

@Osaladin: sure, but the test is designed to make the cpu compute as many actions as possible in an atempt to make the computer fail.

so there will be very little resources left for you to use, but sure, you can probably browse the web during this time, but playing a game would be a lagfest.

@Devildoll: Ok thanks, I'll just run it when I leave the house then.

@Osaladin: just make sure the program has been running for a while before you leave the house, and you then check the temps to make sure nothing is over 80c.

Would really suck if you came back to a burnt down house.

@Devildoll: Lol good point.