Power Supply Possibly Causing Video Card Driver Crashes?

[LordErrant]

My power supply must be coming up to it's 6th birthday this year and I think maybe it's going bad. I'm getting repeated "Driver has stopped responding and recovered" messages whenever I play a game for a seemingly random amount of time and even the odd bluescreen. Especially if I push it to hard, I couldn't ever get Metro 2033 to function at the best graphics settings, it would always lock up, the graphics driver would pack up or the computer would BSOD if I pushed it that far.

So what I'm thinking is that my old PSU is failing slowly just from old age. HWMonitor reports that I only have 8V on my 12V rail. My only other idea is my GPU is faulty out of the box.

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[STACKS ON DECK]

GPU issue

 

[LordErrant]

GPU issue

So I should get on the RMA train?

It's so obnoxious because everything in this PC is brand new apart from the HDDs and the PSU and it's one of the brand new components which is half dead.

 

[mace200200]

First off, what kind of PSU, and GPU are your using, and what other components?
PSU power monitors aren't very accurate, if your actually hitting 8v on your 12v rail, your computers shutting down so theres no way that's right. Driver crashing is usually GPU, you can look up the code for your BSOD, but it's probably going to point right back to driver crashing. Try the GPU in another system if you can, wipe the drivers and try an older version, then RMA the card.

 

[STACKS ON DECK]

it can be . better check this GPU on some other machine .which will give a better idea

 

[LordErrant]

First off, what kind of PSU, and GPU are your using, and what other components?
PSU power monitors aren't very accurate, if your actually hitting 8v on your 12v rail, your computers shutting down so theres no way that's right. Driver crashing is usually GPU, you can look up the code for your BSOD, but it's probably going to point right back to driver crashing. Try the GPU in another system if you can, wipe the drivers and try an older version, then RMA the card.

Yeah sorry I forgot my specs and now it won't let me update my OP.

AMD FX-8320
8.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 803MHz (11-11-11-28)
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. 990XA-UD3 (CPU 1)
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (ASUStek Computer Inc)
1863GB Seagate ST2000DM 001-1CH164 SATA Disk Device (SATA)
698GB SAMSUNG HD753LJ SATA Disk Device (SATA)
7GB PNY ATTACHE OPTIMA USB Device (USB)
Corsair GS600 PSU

I've tried clean installing 2 different sets of drivers and I'm at the arranging a courier stage of RMA. But if they test it and it turns out it's fine then I'm going to look silly and I'll have to pay out of my own pocket to get it back.

It's so weird because I'm currently running a furmark test and there's been no sign of anything going wrong. The only reason I think it might be PSU is that if the voltage for the system is dropping too low it might be that the graphics card stops for a while to keep the CPU running and the HDD's spinning.

 

[mace200200]

Your not overworking your PSU at all so amount of power isn't the problem, I still think it's probably the GPU,

 

[LordErrant]

Your not overworking your PSU at all so amount of power isn't the problem, I still think it's probably the GPU,

Well worst case scenario I send it out, they find there's nothing wrong with it and I know something else is wrong. Best case scenario they find something wrong with it and I get a shiny new card or a refund.

Cheers for the help.

 

[STACKS ON DECK]

there are possibilities on both sides . towards or against your favor . . let's see what happens