Intel HD 4000 crashes my whole computer while gaming.

[mike2012]

Long story short, I used to have an HD 7850. But the fans were dying and making unbearable noise. So I decided to just trash until I save up for a new card.

Now, with the Intel HD graphics I can play Civilization V pretty well on minimum settings at 1028x768 resolution. While playing Civilization V my i5 3570k processor never exceeds 60c. If I zoom in all the way; I get around 40-60fps on minimum. I can get Civilization V running well; but it will randomly freeze the entire computer, while making a buzzing sound.

I've been able to play whole 10 hours games of Civilization V on Intel HD; but sometimes it just randomly freezes the whole computer.

This happens with other games too.

These issues never happened when I had my HD 7850 dedicated GPU.

Are the Intel HD graphics drivers just bugged? I know its not an overheating issue, because the processor doesn't exceed 60c.

Should I just give up on gaming until I get another graphics card?

 

[bjornl]

I'd suggest you just replace the fans on the 7850 for now. A new fan costs 5-15. The only PC I have which has intel graphics is a laptop which automatically switches to a GTX 960 when I launch a game. However I have run moderately intense programs on the intel gfx. Including Visio, autocad and photoshop. None of them crashed the system.
A bug which shows up randomly as late as 10 hours in to a game is odd. Normally you would expect to hit the crash condition much sooner if there were some sort of fault.
I assume you have tried updating the drivers, checked the event log, and just plain checked your PC (malware anti-malware, patches, cleaned out temp files and so on).

 

[mike2012]

Firstly, I would strip the plastic shroud and fan off the graphics card and zip tie a couple of arctic f9 pwm case fans to the heat sink
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/111827381499?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2&ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=122&chn=ps&googleloc=1006886&poi=&campaignid=207297426&device=c&adgroupid=13585920426&rlsatarget=pla-146857550466&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0-L&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=122
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/30cm-PWM-4-pin-Y-Splitter-Fan-Power-Cable-Black-Sleeved-BNIB-/191149512768?hash=item2c81661840:g:r8IAAOxyUylTPmjL
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-x-Arctic-Cooling-F9-PWM-90mm-Case-Fan-upto-1800-RPM-AFACO-090P2-GBA01-AC-/181638696029?hash=item2a4a828c5d:g:YIEAAOSwmrlUtAth
That will cost around 20 $ or so but you wont need a new graphics card,unless you want to upgrade.
Its not 'ideal'. But the card will work fine at stock settings as long as you dont push graphics settings in benchmarks.
(The fans are only 1800 rpm jobs and have low static pressure).
Bjorns solution is optimum but i have never found replacement new gpu fans in the u.k.

Well the HD 7850 isn't a reference model. I had previously tried to remove the custom cooler with no luck. I also tried cleaning the fans; but that did nothing either. I eventually ended up throwing the card away. If the card had a reference cooler, it would've probably have been easy to remove, but it didn't.

Certain games are playable on Intel HD, but they just randomly freeze with a buzzing noise; forcing me to power off the computer.

 

[mike2012]

Oh, thats a shame. You use a philips 0 screw driver and release the whole cooler assembly from underneath,then take the shroud off ,fan off, etc etc.
But you may have some luck if you expand the ram for graphics use in bios.
May.

That's what I tried; but like I said this was a non-reference model.

But there's no way to simply stop the Intel HD Driver from randomly crashing?

 

[bjornl]

Oh, thats a shame. You use a philips 0 screw driver and release the whole cooler assembly from underneath,then take the shroud off ,fan off, etc etc.
But you may have some luck if you expand the ram for graphics use in bios.
May.

That's what I tried; but like I said this was a non-reference model.

But there's no way to simply stop the Intel HD Driver from randomly crashing?

Have you checked if the PC has dust and such in it? It "might" not be driver problems but heat issues not being handled gracefully.

As for the Video drivers, those have always been a problem. A few years ago, well quite a few actually, most crashes on PCs were caused by video drivers and over 1/2 of them by Nvidia. ATI (before they were bought by AMD) accepted Microsoft's offer to send a driver team to live in Redmond, WA and work in Microsoft provided offices on main campus so that they could work day in and day out with Microsoft's DDK and device teams. NVidia declined. ATI drivers got a lot better fast and soon NVidia was responsible for over 1/2 of all bluescreens by themselves. Soon after that NVidia took MSFT up on their offer. NVidia drivers got more stable as well. And MSFT was happy because their customers had a better impression of Windows. As far as I can recall Intel was never on campus. Now clearly Intel, AMD/ATI and NVidia all have excellent programmers. But there is a difference in stability between those who took the extra steps to align their methods with how the OS works and those who did not.

So long pre-amble to a suggestion. Have you tried in-box drivers instead of those from Intel's site? They probably won't be quite as optimized but they are likely to be more stable.

 

[mike2012]

Oh, thats a shame. You use a philips 0 screw driver and release the whole cooler assembly from underneath,then take the shroud off ,fan off, etc etc.
But you may have some luck if you expand the ram for graphics use in bios.
May.

That's what I tried; but like I said this was a non-reference model.

But there's no way to simply stop the Intel HD Driver from randomly crashing?

Have you checked if the PC has dust and such in it? It "might" not be driver problems but heat issues not being handled gracefully.

As for the Video drivers, those have always been a problem. A few years ago, well quite a few actually, most crashes on PCs were caused by video drivers and over 1/2 of them by Nvidia. ATI (before they were bought by AMD) accepted Microsoft's offer to send a driver team to live in Redmond, WA and work in Microsoft provided offices on main campus so that they could work day in and day out with Microsoft's DDK and device teams. NVidia declined. ATI drivers got a lot better fast and soon NVidia was responsible for over 1/2 of all bluescreens by themselves. Soon after that NVidia took MSFT up on their offer. NVidia drivers got more stable as well. And MSFT was happy because their customers had a better impression of Windows. As far as I can recall Intel was never on campus. Now clearly Intel, AMD/ATI and NVidia all have excellent programmers. But there is a difference in stability between those who took the extra steps to align their methods with how the OS works and those who did not.

So long pre-amble to a suggestion. Have you tried in-box drivers instead of those from Intel's site? They probably won't be quite as optimized but they are likely to be more stable.

I'm pretty sure it's not a heat issue. I ran a CPU test with the Intel Extreme Tuning utility for 30 minutes and the hottest the CPU got was 62c. What the CPU test does is it makes the CPU run at 100%. So if the CPU can run for 30 minutes at 100% without overheating, I'm pretty sure it's not a heat problem.

Besides, if it was a heat issue; I would've experienced these problems when I had my GPU installed too.

The drivers I have are actually from the official Intel site.

If it helps I have the "10.18.10.4358" driver.

What happens is I'll just be playing a game, with decent performance (Around 40-60fps) and the entire PC will freeze, with a buzzing noise. This happens at completely random times.

Update: I ran a graphics test in the Intel Extreme Utility for 15 minutes and the temperatures didn't go above 52c.

 

[bjornl]

Oh, thats a shame. You use a philips 0 screw driver and release the whole cooler assembly from underneath,then take the shroud off ,fan off, etc etc.
But you may have some luck if you expand the ram for graphics use in bios.
May.

That's what I tried; but like I said this was a non-reference model.

But there's no way to simply stop the Intel HD Driver from randomly crashing?

Have you checked if the PC has dust and such in it? It "might" not be driver problems but heat issues not being handled gracefully.

As for the Video drivers, those have always been a problem. A few years ago, well quite a few actually, most crashes on PCs were caused by video drivers and over 1/2 of them by Nvidia. ATI (before they were bought by AMD) accepted Microsoft's offer to send a driver team to live in Redmond, WA and work in Microsoft provided offices on main campus so that they could work day in and day out with Microsoft's DDK and device teams. NVidia declined. ATI drivers got a lot better fast and soon NVidia was responsible for over 1/2 of all bluescreens by themselves. Soon after that NVidia took MSFT up on their offer. NVidia drivers got more stable as well. And MSFT was happy because their customers had a better impression of Windows. As far as I can recall Intel was never on campus. Now clearly Intel, AMD/ATI and NVidia all have excellent programmers. But there is a difference in stability between those who took the extra steps to align their methods with how the OS works and those who did not.

So long pre-amble to a suggestion. Have you tried in-box drivers instead of those from Intel's site? They probably won't be quite as optimized but they are likely to be more stable.

I'm pretty sure it's not a heat issue. I ran a CPU test with the Intel Extreme Tuning utility for 30 minutes and the hottest the CPU got was 62c. What the CPU test does is it makes the CPU run at 100%. So if the CPU can run for 30 minutes at 100% without overheating, I'm pretty sure it's not a heat problem.

Besides, if it was a heat issue; I would've experienced these problems when I had my GPU installed too.

The drivers I have are actually from the official Intel site.

If it helps I have the "10.18.10.4358" driver.

What happens is I'll just be playing a game, with decent performance (Around 40-60fps) and the entire PC will freeze, with a buzzing noise. This happens at completely random times.

Update: I ran a graphics test in the Intel Extreme Utility for 15 minutes and the temperatures didn't go above 52c.

The drivers my long boring story was encouraging you to try were the in-box one (the ones included with windows) not from Intel's site.