[SOLVED] Freezing with vertical stripes and buzzing sound while gaming. Which part is faulty if there is one?

[yanech]

Lately, while I'm playing a game (especially if it is a demanding one), there is this issue: firstly the screen turns into vertical stripes of tones of one specific colour (this depends on what's on the screen at the time of crash) and after a second the buzzing sound comes in for 5-10 seconds before it is gone, then the user is forced to reset the computer. I have been experiencing this issue since 3-4 years in specific scenarios (mainly blender cycles caused this in the older version). Lately, it is almost constant.

What I've tried so far:

• I have updated the drivers with the clean install.
• I ran Prime95 and Furmark at the same time for 20 minutes (if it was a game it would've crashed by the 10th minute) but it did not crash. Stress testing causes a lot of heat but not crash.
• I've tried running games on borderless fullscreen or just windowed, it still crashed.
• I ran Windows Memory Diagnostics but there weren't any errors.
• I checked pci-e slots on GPU, re-attached them just in case, but it still crashed.
• I tested games on different disks, crash applied to all of them.
• Windows logs only report that there was an unexpected shutdown (which I do when there is nothing else to do)
• Nothing is overclocked.

What I'm trying to figure out: Is it the GPU, or PSU, or anything else?

Specs:

CPU	AMD FX-8350
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
GPU	Sapphire Radeon R9 280X [3GB GDDR5 SDRAM 384-bit]
GPU Cooler	Stock
Drives	Samsung SSD 850 EVO [120GB] (BOOT) GALAX GX0120L9A250-E1 [120GB] ST1000DM003 [1000GB]
Motherboard	GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD5
Chipset	AMD 990FX (RD990) + SB920/SB950
Memory Modules	Corsair CMV4GX3M1A1600C11 [4GB DDR3-1600] Corsair CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9 [4GB DDR3-1600] Kingston 9905402-669.A00LF [4GB DDR3-1333] Kingston 9905402-669.A00LF [4GB DDR3-1333]
Operating System	Windows 10 Professional (x64) Build 17134.885 (1803/RS4)
Power Supply	Corsair VS650
Case	Zalman Z12 Plus MidT ATX

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

Anything overclocked? Have you monitored the cpu, gpu, motherboard temps before crashing?

 

[yanech]

Anything overclocked? Have you monitored the cpu, gpu, motherboard temps before crashing?

Not overclocked, no. I've tried underclocking but that didn't fix too. The temperatures are high, like for GPU it's 85 degrees celsius. But the thing is, using Furmark and Prime64 simultaneously causes much much more heat in both CPU, GPU, Mobo, and RAMS than gaming (which causes heat mainly in GPU), but it doesn't crash on stress test, it only crashes on games.

 

[yanech]

Self Answer: I have moved the GPU to another slot and I haven't experienced any crash for two days. I guess it was either a bad slot or a heating issue. GPU temperature dropped from 86°C to 82°C on Furmark and again 86°C to 75°C while playing The Witcher 3. It was on the slot that is nearest to CPU and I moved it one row lower.