[SOLVED] Games constantly crashing

[2Dads]

Every game I play crashes (Madden 20 NFL, PUBG, DotA 2, For Honor and so on...). I play about 10-15 minutes and then everything stops. I can move the mouse cursor but I can't alt-tab nor ctrl-alt-del (keyboard is responding until I press ctrl-alt-del) which forces me to manually restart my PC on a button. I've ruled out heat issues (I've replaced thermal paste on both CPU and GPU). Temperatures are OK when gaming.
MSI Afterburner GPU Core Clock: 1176 MHz
GPU Memory Clock: 1750 MHz
Here are my full system specs:

Operating System: Windows 10 Home Single Language 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core i5 2310 @ 2.90GHz Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
RAM: 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard: Intel Corporation DH67CL (LGA1155)
GPU: 4096MB ATI Radeon RX 560 Series (ATI)
Storage: 931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EARS-00MVWB0 ATA Device (SATA )
Power Supply Unit: Antec EarthWatts EA-500D (500W Max.)

 

[LORDPrometheus]

First things first make sure your graphics drivers and windows are up to date

 

[2Dads]

Windows and GPU drivers are all up to date..

 

[LORDPrometheus]

Ok moving down the list with drivers up to date and thermals ok we get to RAM. Looking at your build i notice 2 things about your RAM that gives me pause.

First of all The way it is written i have no idea if you have one stick or 2 or four so can you please clarify?

Also are you sure it is running at 665Mhz? the speed is a bit odd and that cas latency is extraordinarily high for DDR3 1333. I would expect to see 9-9-9-13 or 9-9-9-14 not 24!, This makes me think you are running your ram in either some sort of compatibility or low power mode.

Other than strange timing and clocks however it seems like you are quite possibly running out of memory while in game. A OOM crash would present exactly as you described. Try using Task manager to see how much memory is in use as you play

 

[2Dads]

I've got 4 sticks of RAM. Speccy shows I run them on 665 Mhz and the MSI Afterburner says I use about 6000 mb of RAM while in almost every game, it varies between 4000-6000. So RAM could be the problem?

 

[NightShade_7]

DDR3 @665MHz is an incredibly poor clock for RAM these days. For reference that used to be what low spec DDR2 RAM used to come in, back when DDR2 wasnt old stuff(2005ish, my first PC had DDR2 RAM at 667MHz).

And do tell us the make of that RAM so we can check the reason behind the ominous 665MHz. See if you can change the memory clock to 1333MHz in the BIOS . Your motherboard's listed support is upto that frequency. My recommendation for desktop RAM for gaming would be nothing short of 2400MHz though.

Also what resolution do you play in? Play at 1280x720 to get the best out of your system. Your motherboard and RAM are sort of holding your system back

 

[2Dads]

Actually my RAM clock is 1333 MHz, I don't know why speccy shows it that way.. I play at 1920x1080 resolution. One strange thing I noticed is that my GPU usage sometimes drops to 0% while gaming.

 

[Calvin7]

RAM: 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)
4 sticks of RAM.

Memory part number and/or link to it?

 

[2Dads]

Can this Reliability History report help? I'm sorry but I am unable to check part number right now, because I have to go to work. Let me know if this helps, if not, I'll post part number as soon as I get home. Thank you.


Description
A problem with your hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Code: 141
Parameter 1: ffffc4845c17f460
Parameter 2: fffff802469d077c
Parameter 3: 0
Parameter 4: d98
OS version: 10_0_18363
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1
OS Version: 10.0.18363.2.0.0.768.100
Locale ID: 2057

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: LKD_0x141_Tdr:6_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys
Server information: 81f51df9-b3e3-4cea-a40f-b96d222f7312

 

[NightShade_7]

Actually my RAM clock is 1333 MHz, I don't know why speccy shows it that way.. I play at 1920x1080 resolution. One strange thing I noticed is that my GPU usage sometimes drops to 0% while gaming.

You might experience a momentary freezing of the game when the GPU hits 0% as the textures become clearer. It's not so much a freeze as it is a stutter. One reason is because your HDD runs at 5400rpm.I own a laptop with a 5400rpm HDD that just struggles to load 1080p textures.
A SATA III SSD upgrade would help with that. Sometimess it could also be fixed by setting your Windows power plan to maximum performance.

 

[2Dads]

You might experience a momentary freezing of the game when the GPU hits 0% as the textures become clearer. It's not so much a freeze as it is a stutter. One reason is because your HDD runs at 5400rpm.I own a laptop with a 5400rpm HDD that just struggles to load 1080p textures.
A SATA III SSD upgrade would help with that. Sometimess it could also be fixed by setting your Windows power plan to maximum performance.

Turns out that was the case.
First I found out that one of my RAM stick was faulty so I replaced it and it fixed some of the issues like BSODs etc. But games still kept crashing so I upgraded some of the hardware and put SSD and now it works like a charm. Thank you very much!