Constant blue screens (Video drivers have failed and were recovered successfully)

[Altnob]

Very often my screen will turn black. Two things happen after this. A) 5 seconds later it comes back and I'm greeted with a sys message saying "Your video drivers have failed and were successfully recovered" or the sound will buzz loudly and my PC will remain blackscreen'd until I press the power button.

Specs:

GTX 580 not OC'd or anything

Motherboard
Manufacturer MSI
Model B85-G41 PC Mate(MS-7850)

CPU
Name Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4670K CPU @ 3.40GHz
CPU Socket Socket 1150 LGA
Max CPU Speed 3800MHz

Memory Type DDR3
Installed Memory 16 GB
Available Memory 15 GB
Channels Dual
Maximum Capacity 32 GB

PSU: APEVIA CB700W

[The Stig]

If your usual fixes don't help (reinstalling or updating drivers, and also to the point of reformatting) then it could indicate a failing GPU. How old is she.

[Altnob]

Two years old? Driver updates never fix it. I actually posted about this a while back on tomshardware and someone suggested the PSU was to blame.

[Buffy]

Only one video card?

If so, I'd buy a PSU, swap it, and see if that fixes it. If it doesn't, I'd try a different video card slot on your MB (if you have one), and after those two I'd say it was the card.

I've personally seen that before from the PSU, so it's a good suggestion.

[Altnob]

Only one video card?

If so, I'd buy a PSU, swap it, and see if that fixes it. If it doesn't, I'd try a different video card slot on your MB (if you have one), and after those two I'd say it was the card.

I've personally seen that before from the PSU, so it's a good suggestion.

Only one video card. If it's doing it very often, I will swap slots on my MB and it will fix it for a number of hours and then it'll go back to doing the same thing.

[Shuichi]

If you're feeling up to it. It may be time to take the card out, dismantle it and clean out the dust. Could be overheating.

[orinthia]

With Shuichi's suggestion, give hardwareinfo an install: http://www.hwinfo.com/files/hw32_444.zip This is a hardware monitoring program that can grab the temps of your cpu, gpu, and other readings. I linked a portable version so there's no install; just unzip somewhere, run it in sensor-only mode, and start playing.

You may also try running your game in a smaller window, keeping hwinfo up in the background to visually see your temps as you play. Saved a friend some grief when his games started stuttered really bad after a few minutes of gaming with any game: card was reaching 100C+ and trying desperately not to kill itself. A simple cleaning with compressed air and a cloth was enough to bring it back down.

[Altnob]

thanks for suggestions but it's definitely not overheating.

[Elizara]

Alt; I had some similar problems with my old pc, turned out I had a bad psu + bad video card. If you have a spare video card, try replacing it and see if that fixes it. Same with the PSU.

On my new one, had crashes too, turned out to be bad ram, so check that too.

[SephYuyX]

It's the video card.