PC gaming lockups and crashes

[Annihilator]

I've been having trouble playing games on my PC as of late. I changed my CPU, motherboard and RAM about 5 months ago but hadn't tried gaming since then. I installed Borderlands about a month ago and kept having this issue where the game would lock up on the screen after about 2 minutes of play. The sound would still play, but the image would stand still. By doing an alt-tab and coming back in the game, I could usually keep playing, but after 3-4 occurances the game would either crash or reboot my machine.

I thought at first it could be an issue with my crappy video card (Radeon X1600) so I changed it for a BFG GeForce GTX260 with a corresponding power supply, but the problem still occurs.

I tried an older game (WAY older, baldur's gate 2) and got the same issue as with Borderlands. I tried updating my video card drivers, chipset software, flashed the BIOS to the latest version, ran a chkdsk, tried uninstalling my mobo's built in power saving software (EPU-6 engine), tried shutting down my antivirus, looked at the CPU and mobo temperature in the BIOS after a crash, nothing worked so far.



Here is my hardware setup as of now:

Motherboard: ASUS P5QC, socket 775
Processor: Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q9300 @ 2.5GHz
RAM: 4GB Kingston DDR3 (Not sure on the frequency)
Video card: BFG GeForce GTX 260
550W Power supply

Note: I installed all of that myself, so there is a possibility of a slight problem with the hardware installation, but I doubt it considering the system runs fine by itself as long as I don't launch a game.



Any ideas on a good next step? I'm running out of ideas D:

[fishstix]

When you changed out your hardware, did you reinstall windows? While not reinstalling may seem to work (and in some cases work perfectly) it can cause problems. Also try reinstalling directx

[Annihilator]

Haven't so far, although I have been considering it, I was hoping not having to do that
I'll try that this afternoon and update

[Annihilator]

Reformatted, reinstalled a legit XP Pro 32 bits
Updated to SP3, added all major updates
Installed antivirus, drivers, then Borderland

The problem persists D:

[fishstix]

sorry x.x

That's the only thing I could think of, unless the board's PCIe slot is busted. I tried Borderlands on my evga gtx260 and ran fine

[Caiyuo]

Reformatted, reinstalled a legit XP Pro 32 bits
Updated to SP3, added all major updates
Installed antivirus, drivers, then Borderland

The problem persists D:

Ouch, seems like you can at least conclude it's most likely hardware at this point? Maybe create a new partition and give Windows 7 a whirl just for the sake of squashing out chance of it being software? Should have 30 days to activate it as well.

[Annihilator]

I have win7 on a dual boot, and tried installing borderlands on it
Instead of the described behavior, I actually get blue screen crashes :/
It really does look hardware related

[Annihilator]

Just did a quick memory test this morning

Tried removing one of the RAM sticks, played Borderlands for about 20 minutes before graphical glitches started, as opposed to 3-4 minutes usually
After 30 minutes the game froze

Tried the second memory stick, managed to play for 30 minutes without any graphical glitches, but then the PC rebooted without any sort of warning

[deshende]

I went through troubleshooting a set of lockups on my new pc lately.

Ultimately the fix for my problem was manually setting the voltage on the RAM in the bios. Evidently the RAM I purchased runs stable at a higher voltage than the default that the motherboard ran at. (I found out the settings I need from the comments on the New Egg reviews).