Hey duders,

The subject line says it all. Playing games on Steam is sending my PC into shutdown mode. Games like Fallout NV or Skyrim (technically i'm running Skyrim through SKSE, if that helps) are a struggle for my current system; I get a very loud fan noise and after a time the computer simply cuts power, no freezes or anything like that.

Could it be an overheating issue? My apartment gets warm during the summer and there could be a problem with circulation in that space, though I do have a floor fan running nearby fwiw. It's also possible I need to update my drivers. And FYI- my graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce GT 320 and my processor is an Intel Core i5.

If it's not obvious I'm not very computer literate, so any advice on how to even begin to troubleshoot the issue would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Sounds like it's an overheating issue, download something like open hardware monitor so you can check your temperatures. Also if you haven't vacuumed your system in a while it could be something as simple as dust build up.

Sounds like dust & overheating. Your floor fan might be pushing more dust and hot air back into the system making the issue worse.

Yeah, as the others have said, pretty sure this is a overheating issue. Try to clean up the fans, heatsinks and rest of the case with a can of compressed air and then install some temperature monitoring programs such as Core Temp and/or GPU-Z and keep an eye on the temperatures and fan speeds for the next few weeks to see if it's been cleared up.

Overheating, also double check to see if all your case fans, gpu fans, power supply fan are working accordingly.

Thanks for the advice, all. Much appreciated.

@i_stay_puft: What should I look for with the fans?

@stryker1121: For now just check them visually to make sure they are all spinning.