My PC Crashes During Gaming (Red Screen)

[JeremyLall]

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me, I've been going at this problem for about 2 months now. The problem has been occurring ever since I bought a new graphics card. I upgraded from a Radeon HD 6950 2GB to a Radeon HD 7970 3GB. What really happens is I'd play 10 minutes into a game, then the game would crash. After the game crashes, Windows 8 would crash, displaying a pure red screen. This causes my computer to restart. This only occurs while playing games, so I can watch movies and do regular computing without a problem. I'm not sure if it is a temperature problem (I've already tried increasing the fan speed) or compatibility problem between the GPU and the motherboard, or even with the cpu. I've tried Windows 7 and I'd keep getting the blue screen of death instead of the red screen. Please help.

My specs:
CPU: Intel i7 2600k
GPU: XFX Double D Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB
PSU: Kentek 750 Watts
Motherboard: Asus p8z68-v lx
Ram: 8GB

By the way, I've already returned the Gpu and have received a replacement, but the problem still continues. I've eliminated that the problem is not drivers, as I've cleared and re-installed them many times, and most likely not a defect in the Gpu. However, some people have said that the problem may either lie in a bad communication between the Gpu and the Cpu or in a bad power supply. I'm pretty convinced that the problem is a hardware problem, but I'd like more opinions. Any ideas as to what is happening can really help a lot.

 

[Kyle Easter]

Appreciate your input, jerreece, but your other thread contained no troubleshooting, just a bunch of folks telling the OP how poor his choice in power supplies is.

I did a search for his power supply as well, and found a 750 Watt Kentek, which appears to have a single PCI-e power connector on it. If the problem is insufficient power due to lack of connections on the power supply, the solution is not to throw out the power supply, it is to provide sufficient connection to the graphics card. While the OP may choose to replace his power supply in the future, it has not been determined the problem is due to a fault of the power supply.

If his problem is the fact that this knock off PSU isn't capable of what it's labeled (i.e. it claims 750W but can't actually put out that much) simply using a Molex to PCI-E power adapter isn't going to fix anything. There have been many knock off, cheap, Chinese products made throughout history that claim to meet certain specs that don't. Let alone with Power Supplies. Anyone worth his salt will tell you the last place you skimp is in the PSU department.

The OP may not have realized this Kenetek was poor quality. I'm not blaming him. You can't simply modify electrical stuff and "make it work". The label may claim 750W. But that doesn't mean it's actually capable of that. Knock off companies falsely advertise products all the time. A few of us have seen or heard of it happening before. Junk PSU (or even just an old one) fails and takes out half the components inside the case with it as it fizzles out.

Even if it CAN output 750W doesn't mean the internal components are of solid build. Running it at 750W may be it's doom as it may not be able to sustain that for any length of service. It's no different than you or I trying to overlock memory, a GPU, a CPU, and trying to get our motherboard to provide STABLE voltage so we can balance power with temperature and find the right mix. You can't skimp without potentially having issues.

He's tried different drivers. That didn't help. The symptoms seem like a power problem. Of course AMD will try every software fix they can until they can't fix it because that's standard protocol.

I have the exact same problem as a OP. And I have a XFX PRO 750W which is bronze certified. I highly doubt this is a PSU one time fix. There is clearly more than one variable to this problem if not several. Potentially a damaged card.

 

[DSzymborski]

Appreciate your input, jerreece, but your other thread contained no troubleshooting, just a bunch of folks telling the OP how poor his choice in power supplies is.

I did a search for his power supply as well, and found a 750 Watt Kentek, which appears to have a single PCI-e power connector on it. If the problem is insufficient power due to lack of connections on the power supply, the solution is not to throw out the power supply, it is to provide sufficient connection to the graphics card. While the OP may choose to replace his power supply in the future, it has not been determined the problem is due to a fault of the power supply.

If his problem is the fact that this knock off PSU isn't capable of what it's labeled (i.e. it claims 750W but can't actually put out that much) simply using a Molex to PCI-E power adapter isn't going to fix anything. There have been many knock off, cheap, Chinese products made throughout history that claim to meet certain specs that don't. Let alone with Power Supplies. Anyone worth his salt will tell you the last place you skimp is in the PSU department.

The OP may not have realized this Kenetek was poor quality. I'm not blaming him. You can't simply modify electrical stuff and "make it work". The label may claim 750W. But that doesn't mean it's actually capable of that. Knock off companies falsely advertise products all the time. A few of us have seen or heard of it happening before. Junk PSU (or even just an old one) fails and takes out half the components inside the case with it as it fizzles out.

Even if it CAN output 750W doesn't mean the internal components are of solid build. Running it at 750W may be it's doom as it may not be able to sustain that for any length of service. It's no different than you or I trying to overlock memory, a GPU, a CPU, and trying to get our motherboard to provide STABLE voltage so we can balance power with temperature and find the right mix. You can't skimp without potentially having issues.

He's tried different drivers. That didn't help. The symptoms seem like a power problem. Of course AMD will try every software fix they can until they can't fix it because that's standard protocol.

I have the exact same problem as a OP. And I have a XFX PRO 750W which is bronze certified. I highly doubt this is a PSU one time fix. There is clearly more than one variable to this problem if not several. Potentially a damaged card.

True, but a lot of these problems, you have to start from the likeliest source and work through them one-by-one - there ain't any guarantees. In your case, since you have an excellent PSU, that's not the first place I would look.

 

[edhem]

I have the ATI 5970, and have been getting that issue recently (one monitor red screen, one monitor black screen with red stripes and one completely blank, and then the computer has to be restarted). The card is over three years old, so I am assuming it is starting to fail due to usage. In your case I am assuming you just received a bad card. My power supply works fine, and has not been giving me any issues.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Actually, 5970's date all the way back to the end of 2009, although the manufacture date for your card could certainly be more recent. It does sound like your card could be failing due to age. Also, if you are interested in help with your problem, I suggest starting a new thread, rather than necromancing a zombie thread.

 

[huldu]

This is old, but I ended up here because of google so still quite relevant. The thing with bluescreens(or in this case a red one) is that the cause can really be *anything*. It's close to impossible to pinpoint them down to a certain hardware/software in your PC without far more details. It's just speculations and guesses. It literally could be your PSU, motherboard, graphic card, memory, hdd... or a software/driver problem. If you've never had bluescreen in your previous windows installation, for example win7, then all of the sudden when you install win10 you're getting a bsod once a month. You can blame it on win10 and a driver problem.

In my case they are so random and happen far too infrequently to even say what is wrong. It just happens maybe once a month, if even that. Last time I got a bsod while playing fallout 4 *after* installing the beta patch. I had played the game for over a week without *any* problems up until that point. I sometimes, it has happened twice(with today included) while playing world of warcraft, get a bluescreen(or red in this case) when I have twitch with a stream on in the background and constantly tabbing from game to chrome, with a stream running. Last time it happened I actually got a log that said it was caused by the audio driver. Win10... pretty sure I'm going to restore win7 at some point, never had a problem with win7 and then all of the sudden you get these random events that just pop up whenever they feel like it. I had 0 bluescreens in win7 for 3-4 years and switching to w10 all of the sudden causes them to magically appear? Yeah, right. Bad software/drivers.

 

[davinblackard]

I just experienced the same problem in my system 10 minutes in to a game and flat red screened to start up. I have been having instability issues from the beginning of this build and thought i had it down to my power supply being too small in watts for my system. Im requiring 615 watts and i have an evga supernova 650watt. But all my problems have been blue screens with stop codes at one point it was windows another was bad ram and then drivers and then who knows what i replaced ram ssd motherboard and cpu still getting problems. My ram started giving me a coil whine sound here recently while gaming and then this red screen.

Specs
Cpu. Ryzen 2700x
Motherboard. Msi x470 pro carbon
Gpu. Msi radeon r9 390
Psu. Evga 650watt supernova
Ram. Corsair rgb pro 32gb 4x8 3200mhx c14

 

[DSzymborski]

Six years later, my doctor still calls me a fatass (he's correct).

But six years later, you should be starting new threads with your problems, not glomming onto someone else's random thread from 2013. Heck, you shouldn't be hijacking someone else's thread with your related problem if the thread is six hours old instead of six years old.

Since the drift has not been caught, I will close this thread now.