Built a gaming PC last year, randomly shuts off and poor gaming performance?

[Back2Lumby]

Hey,

Last year I built a gaming PC. Here are the specs

430W EVGA Power Supply
ASUS R9270x Graphics Card
AMD Athlon X4 860K Quad Core 3.7 Ghz
ASRock FM2A55M Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD
8GB Ram (2 4B sticks)

Here are the problems I've been having:

1. My CPU fan is extremely loud, and the CPU itself is also really hot. I've tried dusting it out and applying thermal paste, but this only solved the problem for like a week. The CPU gets really loud only when I'm gaming. It's not just a slight hum though, it's a blaring noise.

2. About once a week, my computer will shut off randomly and I'll get a blue screen. Before, when I had higher power settings, it would shut off once almost every day (without the blue screen though).

3. When playing games such as Skyrim or Dark Souls, I've noticed a decline in performance. Even lighter games such as Runescape on high-detail will straight-up tell me that I'm running out of RAM (or "heap" or whatever) but I have friends who can run the game with the same amount of RAM that I have but much more smoothly, and without problems.

Here's a screenshot of HWMonitor while I have a game running.

http://gyazo.com/de9393586d6622ce75fbe77bb9425ff7

If you can answer any of my questions I'd appreciate it.

Also, if you have any insight on how to improve my gaming PC and make it last longer (I'm excited for some upcoming games) I'd also really like that.

Ultimately my goals are to play upcoming games (like Dark Souls 3) and to also record my gameplay smoothly, while keeping my PC healthy.

Thanks for reading!

 

[zjuventus14]

I would first upgrade your PSU, as 400W is usually the minimum, and you want to add extra wattage to the minimum required, plus higher watt PSU's are usually higher quality. Also, you might want to invest in liquid cooling for your CPU, since you have a temperature problem, and if you can, add more case fans(It cooled my PC down by 10C). Watch the linustechtips video on positive vs negative pressure if you add case fans. Also, you should always apply thermal paste when you first get a computer. Definitely upgrade your CPU fan(as I said above, you might try liquid cooling), but if you are currently using the stock cooler, I would definitely upgrade from that. Noctua has great coolers, although they are pretty ugly... Find a cooler that works for you, and watch some tutorials on removing old thermal paste and applying more properly. Best of luck!