Major slowdown when playing games. Need help.

[starterpivot]

Now I'm not sure if this is my graphics card or what, but when I'm playing games (noticed it more with Far Cry 3, PAYDAY 2, Battlefield 4, and a few other games) my framerate literally just cuts in half, for example, I can normally max out PAYDAY 2 with 50 to 60 FPS, and I was playing, but after about 10 minutes or so It cut down to 24-30 FPS. Same happens with BF4, I normally play with medium settings with 45 FPS but it just goes down to around 20 after a while. Please help.

PC Specs:
AMD A8-6500
AMD Radeon R7 250 1 GB GDDR5
1 stick of 8 GB RAM at 1600 Mhz
MSI Jasmine MS-7778 Motherboard
HP 300 Watt PSU

 

[Andrew Buck]

This makes perfect sense. Your GPU or CPU are probably overheating. That HP 300 Watt PSU is also barely sufficient. I recommend a 400-450 Watt PSU to be safe. Also, sell that RAM. You want 2 sticks of 4 GB for dual channel. It will really help you.

 

[Cryoburn101]

Cleaning out your case would be a good start before you go buying anything. Use a compressed air can and a paintbrush to thoroughly clean out the dust from heatsinks and other components. This may help what I suspect is overheating components. Dust reduces the effectiveness of cooling solutions.
Another issue may be your case has poor circulation. First check your temps. Then remove the side panel and blow a house fan into your computer. If the temps drop dramatically, then you need better cooling.
-Make sure back-top fans are blowing air out, and bottom-side-front fans are blowing in.
-Fix any messy cable management. This can impede airflow.
-Add a fan or two if the above didn't help to reduce temps.

If that doesn't fix your issue, then its likely your PSU not being able to provide enough power. Always have at-least a 100w buffer from what you would need.

If you can, add another ram stick for duel channel support. I doubt this is the issue here, but would still have a performance increase.

 

[starterpivot]

Well I checked both the CPU and GPU temps and neither are overheating. So should I just get a new PSU? I was considering this but I wanted to check here first.

 

[Andrew Buck]

Your PSU could be overheating.

 

[Cryoburn101]

Your PSU could be overheating.

 

[starterpivot]

How can I tell if it is overheating? I know that when I restart my PC the FPS will go back to normal.

 

[Cryoburn101]

How can I tell if it is overheating? I know that when I restart my PC the FPS will go back to normal.

Did you try cleaning it out? Thats probably the easiest thing to do without much hassle. Just blow some compressed air and see if that helps.

I'd still upgrade the PSU to a better brand such as SeaSonic, XFX, or a decent Corsair PSU.

 

[starterpivot]

I think either way Im still gonna upgrade the PSU considering in the future I want to buy a higher end graphics card. If I have some compressed air lying around though I will blow it out and see if it helps.