PC Freezes Randomly With Games

[Ianuarius]

I've had this problem for as long as I've had this PC, so since 2012. It doesn't happen all the time and with some games it happens once and then never again. Earlier my PC froze with Fallout 4. I was streaming on Twitch with OBS simultaneously, as I normally do.

Now it's doing this with the new Doom which is especially annoying because it always corrupts the savegames and forces me to start from the beginning.

One of the monitors turned black with some white, vertical, broken lines flickering in the left side of the screen.

Some of the worse games seem to be the Crysis series. They can freeze the pot pretty regularly.

None of my hardware is overclocked and the temperatures with Doom don't seem to be a problem.

http://imgur.com/a/8emSa

Window 10 Home
i5 3570K
P8 Z77-V LE
GeForce GTX 970 AMP! Omega
8GB RAM
HCG 520-EC 520 W
Help, please! This is starting to get out of hand.
Thank you for your time.

 

[YoAndy]

You should download MSI Afterburner and check your system for high temperatures or any other issues.

 

[Ianuarius]

Did you read the post?

 

[YoAndy]

Did you read the post?

Yes I did why?. MSI Afterburner monitors your entire system not only temperatures. Not only things like CPU usage and temperature by each core, same with GPU. Quote: Overclocking is just one feature of MSI Afterburner. Equally useful is the OSD which allows your to display the Framerate, CPU usage and Temps, GPU usage, Coreclock, Memory Clock and GPU memory used. You can also display per frame latency and Memory usage.Because of the amount of information you can display with Afterbruner, it makes a great performance troubleshooting utility. If you are playing a game and are wondering if your GPU or CPU is bottlenecking performance you can use the OSD to display CPU usage and GPU usage. If all CPUs are maxed out at 100% but your GPU is only at 50%, then your CPU is holding your GPU back, or the game is simply not optimized (happens a lot with newly releases games) And that's only an example of what you can troubleshoot using Afterburner.

 

[Ianuarius]

What are you talking about?

 

[YoAndy]

What are you talking about?

Have you downloaded the latest drivers for your GPU? what resolution and refresh rate monitor are you using??

 

[Ianuarius]

Resolution 1920x1080, Refresh rate 60hz.

Not on the latest drivers. But like I said, I've had this problem for a while and with games like Crysis 2.

But sure, I'll download the latest drivers. I'm not very hopeful, though.

 

[imrazor]

The artifacting and freezing you're describing sound either like overheating or a bad video card. Do you have another video card you can test with, or borrow one from a friend?

Have you tried gaming without OBS? Any freezes or artifacts then?

 

[Ianuarius]

Yes. I'm gaming now without OBS. And this also happened with my previous video card. Like I said in my first post (and there's a picture of the temperatures) I don't think it's overheating. Unless 80 degrees in some universe means overheating.

Updated the drivers to the latest. Still freezing.

 

[imrazor]

Please notice that I said overheating -OR- a bad video card. In your case, I strongly suspect your card is defective. That's why I suggested testing with a different video card to see if the problem persists.

 

[Ianuarius]

Just gotta buy a new video card.

Please notice that I said I had the problem before I bought the current card. Maybe, just MAYBE they both had the very same defect, but then again, maybe the next card will too. When can we rule out the video card being defective?

 

[imrazor]

Sorry, but you didn't mention that you had tried with a different card. It may not necessarily be relevant, but what other model of GPU did you try? To be sure, it would be helpful if you could find a third card and test with that. Or, give your Zotac to a friend to test out and see if he has any crashes.

Has the problem been historically occasional, and only recently got worse? How often does it lock up/crash/display artifacts?

Software could also be a problem. Does this happen *only* when running OBS, or does it happen when gaming without video capture/streaming?
Are you using hardware assisted encoding, or software encoding? Additionally, Windows itself could have issues. Have you reinstalled Windows on this system since you got it in 2012? What version are you currently running and what version did you originally put on it?

If we can eliminate software and GPU, we have to look at other components. Antec is a good brand of PSU, but even the best company can make a dud. Have you tried with a different make of PSU?

That's enough for now. If all of that checks out we may have to start looking at your motherboard or cpu, though those are less likely to be a source of artifacting and game-related crashes.

 

[Ianuarius]

Oh, I didn't say that. Sorry. I guess that was somewhere else.

"It may not necessarily be relevant, but what other model of GPU did you try? To be sure, it would be helpful if you could find a third card and test with that. Or, give your Zotac to a friend to test out and see if he has any crashes."

I don't have any friends. Flying solo here. Anyway, if it's realistically the only possibility, I'll just buy another board. Time is the premium currency of life. I have the money.

Problem hasn't gotten any worse. I can recall it happening with Crysis, Crysis 2, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Oblivion, Skyrim, Doom, Wolfenstein... a bunch of Bethesda games, I suppose. Oh, and the new XCOM. I think with the other card I was able to fix it by turning the clock down a hair, but I'm not sure if it fixed it completely. Maybe it still is the video card. Just seems unbeliveable that I keep getting the same issues with the new card that I had with the old.

I haven't used OBS with Doom at all, and it still keeps freezing after a 30-60 minutes of play or so. Then again, sometimes it doesn't happen. I can play for 2 hours with no freezes. I don't get any artifacting with Doom. The other monitor just goes black (it's not connected to the same card) and the one connected to the 970 freezes. Keyboard unresponsive etc.

Original windows was 7 then I upgraded to 10. Honestly, I can't remember if I did a fresh install.

Haven't tried another PSU. I'm starting to think I just gotta throw the current build to the bin and buy a new one. I don't have any test parts lying around and I can't reasonably get them. If I buy a new one then... I already have a new one.

 

[imrazor]

So if you're time's more valuable to you than your money, here's what I'd do. I would buy a new video card. If it works fine, problem solved. If it doesn't, then trash the rest of the system, and transfer the new video card to a whole new system. Otherwise you're looking at a serious investment of time tracking down the ghost in the machine.

Personally I hate trashing parts that might be perfectly good. But I understand if you don't want to invest the time. It can be time-consuming and frustrating.

 

[Ianuarius]

Makes sense. Thanks.