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PC crashes to desktop during games
Hi all, within the past week or two I've been faced with a recurring issue that's been disrupting my gaming experience.
Some context:
I built my current PC about 4 months ago, all parts are brand new except for my GPU which is a little over 2 years old, however was not used until I installed it to this PC. Specs are as follows -
GPU: EVGA GTX 660 2048MB GDDR5 Graphics Card
CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) Dual Channel
Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC Mate LGA1150 Intel Z97 Chipset DDR3 CrossFire SATA3&] USB3.0 A&GbE ATX Motherboard
Power Supply: EVGA 500 B1 80+ BRONZE, 500W Continuous Power
Storage Device 1: Samsung 850 EVO SATA III Internal SSD 250 GB
Storage Device 2: Seagate 1TB Desktop HDD SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive (ST1000DM003)
Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24F1ST - DVD SATA SUPERMULTI Burner
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Note: I've used the SSD as my main storage device up until a few days ago when I installed the Hard Drive. The OS is installed on my SSD.
What is happening:
It seems this problem has been happening in different variations, they are very similar but I will describe all 4 I have encountered.
VARIATION 1:
Within the past week or two, I've started playing Battlefield 3 again. Before this I have played considerably less demanding games, namely League of Legends and Minecraft. I am able to run these on maximum settings no problem, with framerate in the hundreds. However, in the case of Battlefield 3, after a bit of time playing the game in one session, the screen freezes, sound repeats, then goes black. It stays like this for a few seconds before I am at my desktop, Battlefield minimized to tray, and am prompted with this error message- https://gyazo.com/36e60a2399878be43d5a4a6829de41f3
If I try to click on the Battlefield 3 icon, it doesn't open up and the only way I can close the application is manually through Task Manager.
It seems to happen anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour into one Battlefield session.
VARIATION 2:
I also recently purchased the new Metal Gear Solid, only to find this issue is also being replicated on this game as well, but slightly different. Similarly with Battlefield, after a bit of time playing the game (seems to be anywhere from 15-30 minutes in this case), the screen freezes, sound glitches, screen goes black, and after a few seconds I arrive at desktop screen with the game minimized to tray, except no error message, and weirdly, the background ambient sounds keep playing, but nothing else. Same with Battlefield, MGS doesnt open when I click the icon and can only be closed manually through Task Manager by closing the application. However after closing the application the sound was still playing, and I managed to stop it by closing the actual process.
VARIATION 3:
This one happened for the first time earlier today when playing MGS. Same as before, after a bit of time into the playing session is when I start experiencing the problem. Except this time, the screen froze at a more graphically intense moment, as if it were about to freeze and crash to desktop, except this time it didn't crash, it froze for a second and then framerate plummeted to something around 10 fps (not sure but it was really low) and remained that way for a few minutes before it eventually froze for a few seconds, and crashed to desktop the same way as before.
VARIATION 4:
This was the most recent instance of the issue I have experienced. This time back on Battlefield 3. Same as before, a bit of time into the playing session and it does the same thing, except when it freezes, it stays frozen at the last frame for nearly 10 seconds. During this time I tried pressing the caps lock key to see if the light flickered on the keyboard, and it did not turn on. At first it seemed to be a whole system crash, as indicated by the caps lock light test, where I'd have to manually restart the PC to fix it, however it eventually unfroze for a second before going black screen, and I was only able to escape it by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del. This time, my cursor disappeared, and the whole computer was lagging heavily, it would freeze for around 4 seconds before my mouse movement was registered, or keyboard input was registered, I could tell the mouse was still "there" somehow, because when I moved it around on the desktop screen, I could see the outline of applications lighting up indicating my mouse was hovering over it, however was not appearing. Aside from this, the most important piece of information from this is that my computer froze every 4 seconds before it became responsive to for half a second, before freezing for 4 seconds again. In this instance of the crash I received no DirectX error, oddly. The only way I could get the immense lag to stop was to manually restart the computer.
In previous instances of this issue, I was not too alarmed, however in this case I became concerned enough to write this post since my whole PC nearly crashed as a result of this, and I got heavy PC lag. As weird as it may sound, it's almost as if the issue is evolving.
What I've tried so far:
After the first encounter with this issue, I talked to some of my computer/tech savvy friends and I've tried a few of their suggestions offered to me. These include:
- Updating to the latest version of DirectX
- Updating to the latest NVIDIA Graphics Card driver
- Making sure GPU was set to default clock speed
- Disabling "Origin in game" option in Origin client
- Closing NVIDIA Geforce Experience while playing
- System scans, for malware etc.
- Error-checking my SSD
- Monitor temperatures for anything unusual (will post logs if requested)
- Swapping the RAM sticks into opposite slots
- Dusting out PC (there was hardly any in the first place)
- Removing GPU, and making sure it is placed securely in, as well as power connections
I've tried all of these, but to no avail. None of these seemed to have any significant effect on the problem.
Precursors to this issue:
I've closely evaluated what happens before and after this issue takes place. One thing I've noticed that occurs every time just before the game freezes is- The sounds glitches, it sort of repeats/loops and it seems as if the system lags slightly, although nothing noticeable, it's just the sound that makes a very apparent and audible glitched repeating noise, I dont have any examples of it but it sounds exactly like if you were to roll your R's flawlessly. This happens every time without fail, whenever I hear this, I know it's bound to crash soon.
Additional Notes (Important):
The sound glitching/repeating issue has been occurring outside of games since I started using the computer. It seems to happen most frequently whenever I first start up my computer and I open up all the usual applications such as skype, chrome, league client etc.
One example I can give is- I'm listening to music on youtube in one tab on chrome, I open up another tab and load up a website and the sound glitches/repeats for only under a second but it's definitely apparent. This happens when loading anything from another application, tab, document, etc. However it seems to stop happening after about an hour of the computer being turned on.
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This is about all I can think to add to the post as of now, if I can think of any other important details I will add it later. Thank you for taking the time to read and assist me with my issue, it is very much appreciated.
Additionally, let me know if there is a more appropriate forum section for this question.