My PC freezes/crashes everytime I'm 30~ minutes into a game.

[OptimusKevTron]

Hey! So this just started happening about 3 or so weeks ago, but my PC will run fine when using the internet, watching movies, using other programs like MS Word, etc., but when I decide to play a game on Steam, no matter how demanding it is, about 25-30 minutes into playing a game it will just freeze and begin that horrible "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" dial-up type sound and will force me to reboot manually. And it only happens on certain games too. Some games let me play as long as I want and others will freeze just a little ways in.

These are my specs:

- AMD FX-6300 with Hyper 212 EVO cooler
- Gigabyte 990X Gaming motherboard
- MSI GTX 1060 6GB
- 16GB (4x4) EVGA DDR3 RAM
- 2TB HDD
- Two 250GB SSDs
- Corsair CX650M PSU

I do overclock my CPU, but I always have and there's never been any problem. I've had it as high as 4.7GHz and just yesterday turned it down to 4.2GHz, always with the correct voltage. I did a ton of experimenting to see if maybe I just had something off, but no matter what I put them at, any game would freeze and crash after 20-30 minutes of gameplay. I've been overclocking and playing with this setup, no problem, for the past year or two, but all of the sudden it won't let me play longer than half an hour.

I've read through countless forums on here and other sites trying to find a solution, but no luck. It worries me that since it just started happening the past 2-3 weeks or so that it could be my CPU or MoBo crapping out on me. There's seriously not a single thing different I've done in months and I even run scans through McAfee every few days to make sure nothing is wrong and to clean my PC. And I've tried re downloading drivers and whatnot. I hope this is obviously to you guys so I know what to fix because I've been thinking about upgrading to Ryzen for a while now so if my CPU/MOBO is the problem then at least I already have the money set aside to fix that.

I would greatly appreciate it if any of you could give me a solution to this extremely annoying problem! It's really frustrating playing 20 minutes of a game and then having to hardboot your PC and do it all over again haha. Thank you in advance! And I'll be free to answer any questions you have for me to help you solve this problem.

 

[hollowjw880]

I had this happen to someone before and it turned out to be that the cpu was over heating. Check for dust. If you have liquid cooling check to make sure it is full and lastly since it just started check to see if your thermo paste isn’t gone because it does disappear after time

 

[OptimusKevTron]

I had this happen to someone before and it turned out to be that the cpu was over heating. Check for dust. If you have liquid cooling check to make sure it is full and lastly since it just started check to see if your thermo paste isn’t gone because it does disappear after time

Very good ideas! I think my Hyper 212 EVO might be a little dusty so I should probably just give my whole rig a good cleaning and I'll be sure to check on the thermal paste. Thank you for the ideas! I'll let you know if it works!

 

[Rexer]

Try this first. Reset the game or set the game to default settings. I use Steam to play Call of Duty games. Sometimes Steam remembers your crash and reprograms the crash back into the game. Steam even did this when I uninstalled and reinstalled the game. Don't forget to write down your settings as they will be gone.
Steam likes to remember your settings so you won't have to re-do them on a fresh install. A great feature but sometimes it remembers the crashing.
Hope this helps.