Am I facing hardware failure? Does my PC slowness have anything to do with it?

[jacobcrayola]

For the past I'd say 2 years, I have had a problem where when I'm gaming (usually Dota 2, but maybe that's just because I play this game most often) my screen suddenly goes black. The monitor goes to sleep as if there's no connection, the PC stays on and all of the keyboard and mouse lights stay on. The audio lingers for a few seconds and then stops.

The rate at which this has been happening is sporadic. For instance, for several months or weeks I might encounter the problem 0-4 times a week whereas on other months/weeks it won't happen at all. This is concerning me, as I heard it's a sign of hardware failure.

I asked a knowledgeable relative and they told me to run benchmark tests and stress the GPU and CPU. I downloaded AIDA64 Extreme (Trial version) and ran two tests: a "GPGPU Benchmark" and a "System Stability Test." Here are my results: https://imgur.com/a/erbgV0d (2 pictures)

Here are my specs:
- Intel core i5-4590 (3.3 Ghz base frequency) (About 1.5 years old)
- AMD RX 470 4 GB VRAM ("Strix") (About 1.5 years old)
- 8 GB DDR3 (Ripjaws) (A little over 2 years old)
- Gygabyte B85M-DSH3 (A little over 2 years old)
- 1 TB HDD 7,200 RPM (WD Blue) (A little over a year old)
- 500w PSU (probably a little over 2 years old)

Some background:
-I'm an intense gamer. It's all I do when I come home from school aside from homework and on vacations as well.
-For many months I didn't clean the dust off my PC.

Also, my PC has become progressively slow and clunky. Turning on my PC and getting everything to load is slow; programs are slow to run; many short-term freezes while browsing and loading programs; etc. This has been happening for about 2 years, but lately (past 6 months) it's been getting worse and worse.

So my questions are:
Am I facing hardware failure?
Did I run the correct tests?
Is my PC slowness in correlation to my issue?

I'm not a very computer-savvy person, so if someone could guide me on what I need to do, that would be great! Thanks!

 

[Barty1884]

The slowdowns could just be from a bloated OS..... potentially a failing HDD, but assuming it hasn;t been dropped etc, an HDD ~1 year old should be fine (not as fast as an SSD could make your system, but "fine" none the less).

Which "500W" PSU, specifically?

The cutting to black could be a driver issue, potentially a power issue.

I would suggest Furmark as a stress for your GPU. It's overkill, relative to anything you do with it currently (ie gaming), but it'll stress the card and power requirements and, if the issue occurs in there, we can narrow it down a little.

 

[CaptainCretin]

I suggest a vacuum cleaner with a soft brush attachment, and possibly a 1" paintbrush; to clean all the dust out of heatsinks (especially the cpu), fans, grills and any filters (dont let the fans spin up too fast).

Then check to see what the cpu and gfx card temperature sensors are showing, first at idle, and then under a moderate load, then if all looks OK, try the Furmark tests mentioned above.

If your system has been running hot for a long time, the thermal paste on the cpu heatsink may have dried up and need replacing; hence testing under light/moderate loads first.

 

[jacobcrayola]

MY PSU is an EVGA. I'm pretty sure it's this one: https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=100-W1-0500-KR

My temps are looking fine, but I probably need thermal paste anyways, as I've never added additional paste aside from the paste that comes with the cpu. I'll try the Furmark tests.

 

[smorizio]

random shutdowns can be overheat power supply or one that your pushing the 12v rail near it max output. if it not the power supply may be a bad cap or vrm on the mb. with any pc that slowing down...use msconfig turn off programs you dont need running. make sure you have as most ram for the os. to many programs at startup will eat the 8g of ram. run ccleaner and defrag. run disk clean up. run a good malware byte and anti virus scan.

 

[jacobcrayola]

Ok, so I tried the Furmark test. I'm not sure for how long the tests should have ran and the settings, but I ran 2 different tests (10 mins & 6 mins).

First test: http://u.cubeupload.com/jacobcrayola/furmaxresults.png
I chose a random resolution without any MSA, 10 mins. Temp was ~74. FPS was 140+ in the first few mins (like 2-3) and then it stayed at 78.

Second test: https://u.cubeupload.com/jacobcrayola/furmaxresults3.png
I did 1920 x 1080 with 8X MSA, ran 11 FPS on average, 6 mins. Temp was ~73.

I had no crashes or anything funky of that sort. However this morning I launched Dota 2 and while I was on the menu (so not in a match or anything intense), about 20 seconds in, my screen suddenly went haywire and my FPS jumped to about 2 or 3. It was just so slow and clunky that I couldn't even exit the game. The audio from the game stopped and all I could hear were constant erratic noises (like generic weird computer noises). They were at different frequencies but it was just non-stop (like 2 of these noises per second) until I was forced to turn off my computer via the power button. I have no idea why this happened, but it happened probably 5 minutes after startup.

I tried to find the right comparisons on the Furmark website but I could not find my graphics card, it was weird. Did I run this correctly? Are there any evident problems based off the tests?