Question PC started crashing with no changes beforehand

[ethanefrazier]

CPU: Intel Core i5-8600K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.6 GHz LGA 1151 (have not tried to oc)
CPU FAN: Noctua NH-D15, Premium CPU Cooler with 2x NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fans
MOBO: ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z370 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC Black Edition GAMING, 11G-P4-6393-KR, 11GB GDDR5X, iCX Cooler & LED (have not messed w oc except for fan curve)
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000
HDD: Seagate BarraCuda ST2000DM006 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive
SSD: SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 250GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-75E250B/AM
PSU: SeaSonic M12II 620 Bronze 620W ATX12V V2.3
OS: Windows 10 Pro 32-bit/64-bit OEM

I built this PC a year ago and it worked perfectly. I updated the GPU to a 1080Ti a few months ago but it had no problems at all. I stopped playing and using my PC much until Metro Exodus came out. It sat there for 3-4 months with minimal use. Once Metro came out I got it and started playing. Then I realized it crashed both at random points and also in certain parts of cutscenes. I thought it was acting like this because it was a new game and was just buggy. Eventually, I was able to get it to not crash by messing with some ingame video settings and turning vsync on. I finished the game with only 2 crashes but they happened out of 20+ hrs of gameplay. I recently started playing Overwatch, Apex, and Pubg again. It would crash randomly on all of those games now too. Before the crashes started, I had no problems at all with gaming or using my PC. I have tried multiple things to fix it but it keeps crashing on games.

The crashes have led to blue screens twice (playing metro) and going into a loop that turns off and on my monitor a few times (also playing metro). But all the other times they crashed, the game would freeze (sometimes sound still worked) then the game would close without any dialogue, except on Overwatch (I got "rendering device lost").

I am at the end of the line and have no clue what is wrong. I am very careful to not download anything sketchy and between the point of stopping using my computer and getting Metro, I had done nothing except watch a few videos or use chrome to do school work. Only other thing that happened at that time was 2 or 3, second long power outages while the computer was asleep. I also have a new surge protector.

I've also run windows memory diagnostic, furmark, and prime95. It says my ram is fine and neither furmark or prime95 crashed or got to unbelievable temps.

 

[crasberry]

I know with Apex and with Metro, the games actually have problems with crashing at the moment. The developers are looking to fix those here soon. But for Overwatch, crashes might be cause by anti cheat software or even high cpu usage. Some advice would be to open task manager and run the game see what your percentages are at on your CPU and GPU to determine which one is being bottle necked, and vsync uses a TON of CPU usage, so turning it off would help, but with your specs, it should be okay.