Computer Repair Store is dumb

[ramman20001]

So recently my brother brought his pc into a store because whenever he would boot games it would crash, then said they fixed it, he brought it back home and they crashed still. I said he should get a new Mobo and new CPU (fx 8320e) which he did, and when we did so the computer would work but still crash in games... We brought it back to the computer place to see what to do and they leave us a message after going through the PC, the GPU is a gtx 960 btw, I have used it on my pc to see if that was the problem and it worked fine, What do you guys think? here is the voice mail he left... https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6r3_gjBbCHrbmloeVY4V3FDb28

EDIT: For those asking for specs...
CPU: Was: amd a10-5800k, Now: fx-8320e
GPU: Was: Idk, something bad... Now: gtx 960
Ram: 8gb dims of some pre built stuff
Mobo: gigabyte 970- gaming sli
Power supply: Corsair 430w builder

 

[John J Miller]

I too suggest you change PS to a minimum of 550 W. A 650W would be even better. 450W is running the razors edge for sufficent wattage when running a higher end video card and doing games that require a lot from the video component. And the tech is full of it! AMD cpu's do not nessicarily work better w/ ATI/AMD video cards.

 

[axe41031]

My pc did this in the past, I reinstalled windows, and bought a new power supply, neither of which helped. I ran a memtest, and found that a stick of ram was going bad, replaced it and haven't had any trouble in 2 years.

 

[N0BOX]

My pc did this in the past, I reinstalled windows, and bought a new power supply, neither of which helped. I ran a memtest, and found that a stick of ram was going bad, replaced it and haven't had any trouble in 2 years.

My first thought was also a dodgy RAM stick, but with it sometimes just crashing the game and not producing a black screen or the dreaded blue screen of death that seems less likely. Any time I had a bad DIMM I would either completely lock or BSOD... never just have a program crash. I suppose it may be possible, or maybe Win 8 and 10 can survive a failed read/write/allocate where XP and 7 cannot.

My guess is that the PSU just isn't able to provide the juice. That said, I would avoid letting the store tech install "a new power supply." I would only do that if you can specify the power supply and have them order the one you want. Most of the computer shops I've been in carry cheap off-brand PSUs, one of which fried a hard drive every month or two until I ordered a Seasonic SS-760XP2, which stopped the progression of failed drives. I'm glad I had everything backed up and also had the four drives in a RAID0+1 fakeRAID (onboard Intel eRST RAID) array.

I would suggest reading up on the most reliable PSUs if you decide that the power supply needs to be replaced (even if it isn't the cause of the crashes, you really do need a more powerful PSU). Remember that the PSU is what provides all that dangerous current to every power-hungry and expensive bit of gear in your computer, so if it isn't reliable and safe, none of your computer parts are safe, either. I've been out of the market too long to make a recommendation, but the Tom's Hardware forum gave me a good amount of info when I bought my last PSU.

Good Luck!

-- Matt

 

[Wolfshadw]

ramman20001

PM me if you need this thread re-opened.

Wolfshadw
Moderator