Computer crashes playing League of Legends, no BSOD

[Kajitii]

I hope this is in the right place. If not, I'm sorry.

Anyways, my computer has a problem that has probably existed since I got it, but it's only in the last few months that it has cranked up in frequency other than "extremely rarely". When the problem happens, the computer stops and hangs indefinitely: screen stops updating, sound cuts off immediately. I usually do a hard reset to get on with life. The scary part is that there is no BSOD, and there are no crash dump files generated.

Usually when the problem happens during a game of League of Legends, I quickly reboot and reload back into the game. During this time, gameplay quality is noticeably degraded for the whole duration, and sometimes it gets so bad, I have to lower the graphics settings to make the game playable again. This quality issue goes away if I haven't used the computer for a while.

While this problem does happen when I play League of Legends, it's apparently not unique to that game. It can also happen when I have been on some VOIP service for a very long time, watching streams + playing an intensive flash game (or otherwise asking the Flash VM to do lots of work), or compressing a long series of uncompressed (Fraps) screencapture videos. It gets even weirder: the computer doesn't crash when I'm playing Starcraft 2 or Age of Empires Online, and I frequently get moments in both games where it starts lagging pretty badly (15 fps or less). At least, it hasn't yet.

Frequency of these crashes can be somewhat predicted based on how often I use the "bad" software, but there is one time a very long time ago when two crashes happened literally within a few minutes.

I don't have the complete information about my desktop specs, but hopefully I have uploaded enough information. If not, please let me know.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[Arc]

While this problem does happen when I play League of Legends, it's apparently not unique to that game. It can also happen when I have been on some VOIP service for a very long time, watching streams + playing an intensive flash game (or otherwise asking the Flash VM to do lots of work), or compressing a long series of uncompressed (Fraps) screencapture videos. It gets even weirder: the computer doesn't crash when I'm playing Starcraft 2 or Age of Empires Online, and I frequently get moments in both games where it starts lagging pretty badly (15 fps or less). At least, it hasn't yet.

Some things should be checked there. You are using a version of display driver which was not very stable anytime. It is GeForce 311.06 WHQL

Driver Version: 9.18.13.1106

As your GPU is GeForce GTX 550 Ti ...... I would suggest you to use NVIDIA DRIVERS 314.22WHQL.

This is an old computer I guess? Is the computer hot? Report us the heat of the computer after a couple of hours of your normal usage. Upload a screenshot of the summery tab of Speccy.

Check if the Power Supply Unit (PSU) supplying adequate power to the computer or not.
eXtreme Power Supply Calculator
Also let us know the wattage of the PSU.

Also, if possible, try to update the BIOS to Version F5, dated 2011/08/01 .... your BIOS version is old too.

Overclocking also may cause such failures. If your CPU/GOU etc are overclocked, bring those back to default.

Let us know the results.

 

[Kajitii]

Some things should be checked there. You are using a version of display driver which was not very stable anytime. It is GeForce 311.06 WHQL

Driver Version: 9.18.13.1106

As your GPU is GeForce GTX 550 Ti ...... I would suggest you to use NVIDIA DRIVERS 314.22WHQL.

Done. I'm going to guess that the provided "find stuff automatically" functions that Windows provides isn't reliable for this sort of thing?

The PPU was not updated, but I hardly think this would cause any issues.

Check if the Power Supply Unit (PSU) supplying adequate power to the computer or not.
eXtreme Power Supply Calculator
Also let us know the wattage of the PSU.

Wow, that's a lot of options! Hopefully nothing wrong in there significantly changes the results, but I tried to go for a reasonable worst case scenario (which it may or may not be afaik).

Minimum: 385 W
Recommended: 435 W

Current PSU's hardware label says it is a 500 W.

Also, if possible, try to update the BIOS to Version F5, dated 2011/08/01 .... your BIOS version is old too.

Failed. The update .exe I found was for a 32 bit version, but I can't seem to find a 64 bit version.

Overclocking also may cause such failures. If your CPU/GOU etc are overclocked, bring those back to default.

I don't have anything overclocked, as I don't have the money to be doing potentially dangerous things with my hardware. Also, while super realistic graphics are awesome and all that, I can live perfectly fine playing 16-bit graphic games and such xD

This is an old computer I guess? [/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT]Is the computer hot? Report us the heat of the computer after a couple of hours of your normal usage. Upload a screenshot of the summery tab of Speccy.

The computer is now about a few years old, and I have dusted it a couple of times. It's probably due for another dusting, now that I think about it, but it'll probably have to wait until Friday-ish when my car gets repaired and I can buy some canned air.

I don't have the results for "normal" usage yet, but here's what it looks like atm:
View attachment 286436

 

[Layback Bear]

My research has found that the video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti requires a power supply with a min of 24 amp 12v and the power supply Pixxo PL-500RPF in the OP specs has a 16 amp 12 rail.

Hope this information helps.

 

[Kajitii]

Alright, did an afternoon of Starcraft II, and here's what Speccy's saying:

View attachment 286464

My research has found that the video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti requires a power supply with a min of 24 amp 12v and the power supply Pixxo PL-500RPF in the OP specs has a 16 amp 12 rail.

Hope this information helps.

It may or may not be contributing to the problem, but even with the old GPU, the problem has existed. It's hard to put a date on when the problem started getting bad since it was gradual (I want to say this year), but this GTX 550 Ti is about two years old, just before Christmas.


EDIT: I'm still digging around to see if I can flash the BIOS to the F5 version. It seemed really odd to me that the manufacturer doesn't support x64. But there appears to be a tool of theirs called @BIOS that can solve this problem. I'm looking into it now...

Since I'm not entirely sure whether my MOBO can actually take full advantage of x64 features (it is apparently socket AM2), I'm proceeding with extreme caution and will try flashing the next morning.

EDIT 2: BIOS successfully updated to F5 version, although @BIOS grabbed the rev. 2.0 one instead of rev. 2.1. I hope this doesn't change anything...

EDIT 3: Problem still exists D: