[resolved] semi-random shutdowns (maybe vertical lines), no overheating

Kronbrandt

Prominent
Jul 25, 2017
5
0
520
Greetings.

Trying to troubleshoot this issue for a while now, and as I have found lots of useful info in this community I guess I'll just raise my head and hope someone knowledgeable will be interested in helping me solve this. Thanks to those who do!

The issue:
Computer ran stable (except for obvious overheating issues due to a clogged fan in the past, resulting in the well known vertical lines shut-down, but that is resolved), until I tried installing Mass Effect 2 for holiday entertainment. The game itself runs fine on all kinds of graphics settings, but entering a text-centric menu (options screen, shops, mission summary, etc.) my computer goes into a black screen after ~30 seconds, sound is still running, then about two seconds later, sound hangs and I might be seeing some vertical lines, and maybe a second thereafter the machine instantly shuts down and reboots. After giving up on fixing this, I was looking for other entertainment, and alas, now other games started doing the same thing. Saboteur causes this at random points in the game, even Darkest Dungeon shuts off the machine the same way, albeit the screen seems a bit grey-ish.

Tried the usual shenanigans, killing origin, reinstalling/updating all kinds of drivers, different graphics settings, manhandling the catalyst control center, reinstalling .Net et cetera et cetera. - given that this problem occurs now in games that should run stable, and have run stable in the past, I am afraid that something here might have damaged my hardware.

What I find interesting is that ME2 still only crashes in the same specific situations, and there is no overheating whatsoever. Much more demanding titles ran smoothly in the past, I have replaced them with Furmark now and again, cooking my GPU good does not cause any issues like that, and never has.

My intuition would be that some very specific gadget on my graphics card may be broken that is only addressed in certain circumstances, but I am far too clueless to guess what it might be. As I have no "replacement" hardware to just mix and match for testing purposes, I had hoped for answers on where the issue might sit.

Specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 955
Radeon HD 6870
8GB Ram
Win7 Ultimate
Forgot which PSU but it's an 800W constant power


- Are there known issues with current AMD graphics drivers that could cause this?
- is there a way to figure out if something about the card is broken, even if it runs fine under heavy load in most cases?
- is there a way to test the main board for issues without checking connections via multimeter and e-tech equipment (software solutions are very welcome!)
- CPU is stress tested and did not cause issues, memtest86 did not find any issues either, could these still be the causes for this?
- finally, is there any way to check the PSU's health? It's about seven years old now (I think) but should still be severely oversized for my machine's needs...
- could the constant power functionality in the PSU cause issues due to lack of communication with the computer? (I know that external batteries can cause issues here, so maybe the other side of the PSU could get jumpy as well?)
- any, any other idea what's going on?

I am a little desperate, as I can not afford to even replace the aged rig I have now, much less get a new one. Buying replacement parts I would hope to hit the "right" one on the first try... thanks in advance to anyone who could be bothered to read through all this.
 

Kronbrandt

Prominent
Jul 25, 2017
5
0
520
Okay, I have to repent. After going to great lengths to prove this was a software issue, it seems now the issue is resolved. I had already cleaned my machine and re-plugged RAM and graphics card, but just to be absolutely sure and for lack of a better idea I completely disassembled the machine for proper cleaning, and turns out in a spot I did not see when cleaning before there was a spot of dirt (cola plus dust) connecting a few contacts. (I remember my toddler throwing a glass of soda at my papers, never imagined this could have splashed through the ventilation opening onto my hardware... ) - the problem seems gone for now. Actually, I am surprised nothing seems to have fried and things did not get weird sooner. What a weird thing to happen...