Question PC freezes and crashes when playing games

[coodledoodle]

Hi guys, I'm new here and I apologize in advance that I'm a little PC illiterate and don't quite know a lot of hardware terminology past the superficial level.

Computer was running fine. Got a new case (old one was really beat up) and motherboard. Took it to a pro to be installed, it needed a new PSU (the old one was so shoddy it didn't survive the transfer to a new case. Convinced my PC was holding it together through sheer black magic) and cpu fan. Dude put it together nicely and it ran great.

Not sure if it's something I did. Games ran solid the first day afaik, but a day later the system would completely freeze and need to be reset via power buttons. Sometimes after playing for 10-20 minutes, sometimes in the menu. I've been using Overwatch on lowest graphic settings capped at 60 FPS to test. If the system didn't completely freeze, I'd have weird black visual glitches appearing across the screen until the map disappeared and the game force quit with a rendering device lost error. Sometimes a combo of both.

Made sure all drivers are up to date. Even tried rolling back to earlier NVIDIA builds. Monitored temperature and even tried underclocking the GPU, still getting the same errors. Even made sure ASUS armory was uninstalled + removed. Only happens when playing games (I tested a few different ones), can stream movies and work other programs perfectly fine. Not sure what to do at all. Asked the guy who installed everything and he insists it's a driver problem.


OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz, 3101 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
GPU: Nvidia Geforce 560 ti
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V LX
PSU: EVGA 500 BA, 80+ BRONZE 500W

 

[jay32267]

Being you say your temps are good. What were they btw?

I would lean on it being a driver problem or a PSU problem.
If it wasn't a big pain for me....I might do a clean install to eliminate the driver problem....but also...if I had a PSU to swap in....that may be even quicker.

 

[coodledoodle]

Being you say your temps are good. What were they btw?

I would lean on it being a driver problem or a PSU problem.
If it wasn't a big pain for me....I might do a clean install to eliminate the driver problem....but also...if I had a PSU to swap in....that may be even quicker.

GPU temp staying < 70c. I don't have another PSU to swap in unfortunately. When you say clean install, do you mean windows or just all NVIDIA software?

 

[jay32267]

GPU temp staying < 70c. I don't have another PSU to swap in unfortunately. When you say clean install, do you mean windows or just all NVIDIA software?

Ideally you would install Windows from scratch and then add everything.
This would be the best.
Although...you could try to use DDU to uninstall the current NVidia driver....and install the newest one. It would be something to try.....but because the Windows is still the old Windows...I wouldn't totally eliminate that it still might be a software problem even after that.

If you did a clean install I would be much more confident....if the problem still occurred....that it wasn't software related.

So ideally....I would do a clean install....which is why.....having a PSU to swap in....may save a lot of time.

 

[coodledoodle]

Ideally you would install Windows from scratch and then add everything.
This would be the best.
Although...you could try to use DDU to uninstall the current NVidia driver....and install the newest one. It would be something to try.....but because the Windows is still the old Windows...I wouldn't totally eliminate that it still might be a software problem even after that.

If you did a clean install I would be much more confident....if the problem still occurred....that it wasn't software related.

So ideally....I would do a clean install....which is why.....having a PSU to swap in....may save a lot of time.

Tried resetting windows, still froze after I opened a game to test things.