I finally got a brand new computer 2 days ago and since then I have encountered a situation where my computer screen goes black then sometimes flares back up with red frames everywhere. This has happened about 8-10 times so far and only has occurred from what I have noticed when watching multiple videos in succession or playing a game for longer than 45 mins, it has also forced me to restart my PC improperly 3 times. The card I am using is NVIDIA Geforce GTX 670, if that helps. My knowledge of computers and stuff like this is pretty limited so if someone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

Sounds like your graphics card is getting to hot, maybe try to get some fan control and temperature monitoring going?

First update your drivers at http://www.geforce.com/drivers. Might help. More likely something is wrong with your computer, probably your video card. I would contact the company that built the computer if you didn't build it yourself else contact the GPU maker (Asus, Evga, etc) to have them replace it.

i had something similar when i first built my PC. turned out the GPU was faulty. i exchanged it and it never happened since

I'd purge your video drivers then reinstall the newest version and see if that fixes it. Usually fixes any problems I have.

Okay. I just updated the drivers so I'll test it now.

Just a few things to check:

• Are all the components properly cooled?
• Are you working with a fresh installed windows or a bloated version from a reseller?
• Are all drivers up to date?
• Try only installing the deriver itself. I don't know about your specific card but sometimes there are problems with nvidia audio drivers (for HDMI playback).
• The problem may not be the card itself. (CPU or RAM are also likely culprits)
• If possible try your old card or a different one.

@LackLuster said:

NVIDIA

Well there's your problem. Are you on windows 7?

Getting the same issue with my GT 440, and it seems to happen with extended play (45+ minutes) which is probably due to overheating.

Rolling back to lowest version (first factory drivers) by the company that made the card (in my case ASUS) fixed it for me in most games.

For others I still have to run MSI Afterburner with fans set to 60% or more or the driver will crash and the screen flash. But between 60% fan speed and factory drivers I can play without driver crashes.

I updated the drivers. Uninstalled the reinstalled them. Checked system heat. Still having the issue, although, now the red frames pop consistently while playing SC, but don't freeze the image completely just makes it skip.

I would recommend you get it exchanged for another. Sounds as if its faulty. If it happens with replacement at least you'll know something else is causing the issues.

using a program called MSI Afterburner , you can monitor your gpu heat and better control the fan speed ramping , at least you can tell if its getting crazy hot , you can also use it to try setting the clock to stock speeds (if its a pre overclocked model) or even fiddle with the voltage (probably not recommended)

you can even have it display the various details you want as an overlay similar to fraps , with gpu load/temp etc

i ran into major overheating and stability issues with my 580's , stupidly expected sli to not be much more heat than a single card , lol :(

but fixing the fan speed ramping to something more "predictive" than "reactive" worked wonders for me

I took the graphics card back and sure enough it was faulty. They gave me loaner for now and have ordered me another. Thanks for the help!