PC is crashing when GPU is under load

[JozefK]

My PC has been working fine for several years until today. Was playing WoW, opened a certain menu and my entire PC locked up. After rebooting, the same action locked up my PC again. I reinstalled drivers, still happened. Now, my PC crashes completely when my GPU comes under any load. I can boot some games like Overwatch (on max settings) for a few seconds before I crash, WoW works fine up until opening that one menu then crashes, Mass Effect Andromeda crashes before loading. Older games like Modern Warfare 2 or Witcher 1 run fine.

It seems only older games are working at all, so it looks like any resource-intensive modern games are crashing my PC completely. I've uninstalled drivers in safemode and installed earlier versions and it's still happening.

I have no idea what to do. This has never happened before.

 

[thx1138v2]

Since it has been working fine for a couple of years and you are only having problems under load I would check your PSU. If the components have aged and the voltages are going out of spec under load it could cause these problems and they will only get worse.

 

[JozefK]

It's been working fine for nearly 4 years now. I just tried booting up and got to the Windows login screen but before I could type in my password it black screened and crashed, so it seems like it's not just when it's under load now.

I'll be honest, I didn't build this PC myself. What am I looking for with the PSU?

 

[rolli59]

Post full system specs including make and model of PSU!

 

[Martell1977]

If you can get into safe mode, try running memtest. A long while back I had a crash in WoW caused by a specific action. Turned out to be my RAM was going bad.

 

[thx1138v2]

It's been working fine for nearly 4 years now. I just tried booting up and got to the Windows login screen but before I could type in my password it black screened and crashed, so it seems like it's not just when it's under load now.

I'll be honest, I didn't build this PC myself. What am I looking for with the PSU?

As I said earlier it will only get worse which is where you are now.

Checking the PSU requires some voltage measuring tools with the ability to put the circuits under load. You can't do it with software. It doesn't sound like you will have those tools so you could take the PSU (or the whole computer) to a shop and have them test it. Or you could try a friend's PSU or just buy another PSU.

It could also be RAM but RAM needs a stable PSU to test properly.