My new computer crashes when I game

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1

Hello guys,

I have a problem, my computer that I built a month ago crashes when I'm gaming. It first happened 3 times in a cracked version of Far Cry 3, I thought it was because of it was cracked, because it didn't happen on other games. But since 2 weeks ago it also happened on other games that I didn't crack like Trine 2 and age of empires 3. I get the feeling it starts happening alot more lately (4 times last 3 days), and it's starting to annoy me.

Let me explain what happens; First my primary screen blinks and goes black, I hear my sound loop on the last millisecond and my second screens doesn't go black, but freezes. The fans keep spinning and the start button LED just stays on. I can't turn it on pressing the reset button, I have to hold my start button for a few seconds to turn it off. When I do that it just starts up normally and it's all fine again.

I haven't overclocked anything, so it should just all work. It also only crashes when I play games. I've recorded my temperatures when it happened and my CPU was at 55 degrees celsius and my GPU at 60 degrees celsius. I've run FurMark for 15 minutes, nothing happened and the temperatures stayed around 65 degrees celsius. I've also run Windows Memory Diagnostic and it said it didn't detect any error with my RAM.

These are my specs:

CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-3570K 3,4 GHz

GPU: Sappire Radeon HD 7870

MOBO: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB DDR3

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1tbCase: Zalman Z11 Plus

PSU: XFX core edition Pro 550W

and a DVD Burner

Has anyone got an idea what could be the problem? I think it's the GPU, but I'm not sure. Any help is appreciated!

2

Update your motherboard BIOS, make sure all drivers are updated and windows is updated. Uhh uhh yeah, that's the generic things to check.

3

Yup, yup and yup, they're all updated to the newest updates.

4

Might be GPU, i burned down my 550W power supply with my last GPU because when the temperatures got high, the power requierment was not met, and sure enough, 2 weeks later, PSU died. Thats propably unlikely.

Also might be the hard drive, so do  a check on that.

Windows Event Viewer might give you some information on the crash aswell. See for any errors/warnings or Criticals. 

 

5

Welp, I hate to suggest this with a passion, since usually everything everyone blames on virus's isn't. But virus scan with MalwareBytes? I never trust cracks. Otherwise I'm not too sure, somthing is going wrong if it's not that and it's out of my expertise.

6

Test your cpu with Linx-one hour

gpu with Uniginwe Heaven 4.0 and 3d mark 11

Memory with Memtest 4.0

HDD with HD Sentinel

7

Try older gpu drivers

8

So, I found this article, http://www.behardware.com/news/12705/black-screens-and-radeon-hd7870-a-solution.html

Can anyone confirm this? Would this mean I'll have to send back my GPU?

9

Yeah I remember, that problem with  Sapphire's 7870's (there was also problem with 7950's Vapor-X)

dont know why people concidere Sapphire for some big ass manufacturer, now days its MSI and Asus...

If you have those problems then return it to the store and ask for new/different one (non Sapphire)

It would be good if you record with cell phone your problem just to have some kid of proof etc.

That problem might not show up when sellers technical staf check the card...