Screen freeze, scrambled pixel, while gaming

[Yongx5]

Hi everyone,

My custom built 5 year old PC recently started to freeze only during gaming (The elder scrolls online). The screen freezes every time after 1 hour of gaming:

Sometimes it doesn't show this screen and just restarts as if someone pulled the power cable, other times it shows this screen and makes a continuous sound.
I could be doing anything, talking to some NPC or in action.
Also, I recently changed my motherboard, tried to change the ram from dual channel to single channel (switching 1 ram strip to another slot) and plugged the power cable to the wall instead of the distributor.

I'm thinking could it be that the cpu is getting too old, plus that fact that MMORPGs are more cpu greedy?

Motherboard: Jetway Xblue P45
CPU: C2Q q9550
GPU: Radeon HD 6850
Ram: Corsair 4GB
PSU: OCZ 700MXSP

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks in advance!

 

[nukemaster]

Is the cpu or video card heatsink dusty? Things to act up when overheating.

Also sure your drivers are up to date and try to keep an eye on the temps while playing(use hardware monitor and check the MAX every now and then).

Unfortunately hardware starting to fail can cause these issues as well.

 

[Yongx5]

I have a program which monitors both the CPU and GPU temp. Cpu's temp never reach above 45-50 and Gpu never reach above 65.

The fans are not dusty and I have the latest beta driver from AMD for the gpu, as well.

 

[nukemaster]

Your temps are well within spec. I do not think it would be heat then.

Any chance you have a spare power supply to test on the system. OR maybe the ability to test the video card in a friends system.

The big problem here is that several parts can cause very similar issues.

1. Bad video card or drivers.
2. Bad power supply
3. Bad memory(but this tends to cause blue screen errors.)
4. Bad cpu(more rare)

 

[Yongx5]

I see, but if it was the graphic card, wouldn't it only show the pixelated screen when it freezes? It's also rebooting on some occasions.

Since I don't have an extra psu, is there another way of testing the psu?

 

[nukemaster]

The problem with computers in general is that when something crashes(hardware and sometimes software) everything craps out too.

The constant sound one hears on a freeze is the sound card playing the same sample over and over again because it is not longer getting something else to play.

Restarting and be one of 3 things.

1. Power supply. When a power supply can not handle the load(and is not a total pile of junk), it will just shut down or restart
2. Windows stop error(can be almost any hardware causing this), but these tend to give you a blue screen.
3. very rare hardware/software compatibility issue. The OS freezes up solid(some times a colored screen others what ever is on the screen stays.) and after so long the system just restarts.

I am sure even more things can cause this, but those are the ones I have personally seen.

The problem with "testing" a power supply is you will see many online guides to test by shorting green to black in the 20/24 pin connector.

This has a HUGE flaw. While it will start the power supply, you should not start it this way with all your hardware connected(normally you connect a hard drive and a fan to provide some load). The method does not place a large load on the power supply. Some power supplies even shut off when the load is too low.

This method should show you if a power supply is outright not starting, but will not actually test the power supply ability to hold the load.

Can you get bluescreenview just to ensure you have not have any blue screens. It will show ANY that have not been cleared from the system. They all have a date.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

This may point to what is going on. I would like to point out that failures like this sometimes would just crash the video driver(Windows can recover from this) and not freeze the system. It would just depend on how bad the fault is.

I had a GTX 670 that was failing and it would just crash the drivers over and over(in demanding games and would fail to run folding@home as well), while this did not restart the system. I still have to test it in another system to be 100% sure it was the card and not a driver/system issue.

 

[Yongx5]

I finally found what was wrong. It was actually a simple temp problem but I wasn't looking at the right zone of the motherboard. I read on tom's an article about PC restarting on their own and it said that sometimes the southbridge on the mobo overheats and that makes the pc restart. So I changed my GPU to the 2nd slot (it was really close to the southbridge structure) and my pc stopped restarting! I played over 1 hr today and it didnt crash... hopefully that was the problem.

Thank you so much for your time Nukemaster

 

[nukemaster]

It has been a long time since I have seen SB restarts(so long I have forgot about them. Windows 98 days).

I had an Accelero x2 on my video card once and worried it would cause such issues(it blew all the hot air right on the south bridge). Most of my cards actually blow the hot air out of the system.

Well if that keeps it stable, great.