BSOD while gaming

I've been running into this persistent BSOD whenever I try to play games. It’s getting ridiculous—initially, I couldn't even last 15 minutes before the system crashed. I thought, "Hey, maybe it's the power supply," so I swapped out my PSU for a new one. That gave me about two hours of smooth sailing, but then? Boom. The BSOD returned. Since then, it’s been a downward spiral: first it was 30 minutes, then 15, and now I can barely squeeze in 10 minutes of gameplay before everything goes south again. I'm really looking for some guidance on how to fix this mess. THANKS! 🤔

driftingridge21 said:I've been running into this persistent BSOD whenever I try to play games. It’s getting ridiculous—initially, I couldn't even last 15 minutes before the system crashed. I thought, "Hey, maybe it's the power supply," so I swapped out my PSU for a new one. That gave me about two hours of smooth sailing, but then? Boom. The BSOD returned. Since then, it’s been a downward spiral: first it was 30 minutes, then 15, and now I can barely squeeze in 10 minutes of gameplay before everything goes south again. I'm really looking for some guidance on how to fix this mess. THANKS! 🤔

Well, thanks for the heads-up, I guess!

Look, if you actually want someone to be able to help you out here, you really have to tell us exactly what error message is showing up on that blue screen!

Maybe grab HWMonitor and take a quick look at what your temperatures are actually doing inside the case...

How exactly am I supposed to upload this data? 🙂

I reckon you're overkilling the CPU—gave me the same headache on my old rig.
Just grab some screenshots of the data and dump them on imgur.com. It’s a solid site...

Have you tried overclocking any of your parts? Or did you swap anything out recently, besides the power supply?

View on imgur
I haven't touched my overclocking settings at all. In fact, I've replaced nearly everything in this rig—motherboard, RAM, processor, PSU, graphics card... you name it, it's new.

WhoCrashed

...
Just leave HWMonitor running,
then go play a game until you hit a BSOD. Once it crashes, check those temperatures. Take a photo and post it here.
You need to see what happens at peak temps.
From what I can tell, the CPU Fan is spinning at 3000 RPM, which means your CPU Cooler is small and weak. Your case is likely overheating, and while your power supply might be helping slightly by pulling some hot air out, it's not enough.
You definitely need a high-end CPU Cooler. Every serious gamer uses a large one because no other software pulls as much power from the CPU and Graphics Card as heavy gaming does. A decent cooler will also be quieter since they usually run at around 1000 RPM.
You should also install a case fan behind the CPU Cooler to exhaust the air immediately. Otherwise, the power supply has to struggle to suck in all that hot air, causing it to overheat during gameplay.
The larger the fan, the better. Even if you have an old case with 8cm, 10cm, or 12cm slots...
a larger fan can spin at lower speeds and still keep the PC quiet.
Your Graphics Card will be the only component making noise.
There are other solutions for that too, but they are complicated and not really meant for regular people who aren't electrical engineers.

View on imgur just before the BSOD
Your PC hit a wall on Tue 12/2/2014 9:32:44 AM GMT
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\120214-19140-01.dmp
It looks like the culprit here is dxgkrnl.sys (dxgkrnl+0x9C157)
Bugcheck code: 0x116 (0xFFFFFFFF847021B8, 0xFFFFFFFF8FB634CE, 0x0, 0x2)
Error: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\dxgkrnl.sys
product: Microsoft Windows
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: DirectX Graphics Kernel
Bug check description: Essentially, the system tried to reset the display driver to fix a timeout issue, but that attempt failed.
Since the crash happened within a standard Microsoft module, there's a chance your system configuration is slightly off. It’s also possible that another unidentified driver on your machine is throwing a wrench in the works

Does anyone have a good recommendation for a new CPU Cooler? Ideally something I can order online with standard US shipping. 😁

Maybe give the oldest BIOS version a shot. It’s possible some of your components just aren't playing nice with the newer versions on your motherboard.
I ran into a similar headache once with my Graphics Card..

driftingridge21 You might want to try doing a clean reinstall of your Graphics Card drivers—that usually does the trick and should clear up the issue.

View on imgur Is this considered the first step when you're reinstalling a Graphics Card?🤔

No, no—not there. You actually want to head over to the Control Panel, go into "Uninstall a Program," and look through your list of installed software for the ATI graphics driver. Once you find it, go ahead and uninstall it. Just give your computer a quick restart after that, and then let me know how it goes...

View on imgur I just can't seem to track it down :O

The third one down from the top (AMD Catalyst)

I don't see an option to uninstall. All I have listed are "change" and "repair."

Oh man, you click on change and then—oops—you end up clicking uninstall instead...

I went ahead and uninstalled

Is the image looking a bit zoomed in to you? Everything seems scaled up, right? First off—did you try a quick restart of your computer? If that didn't help, just head over to Google and search for NVIDIA Drivers. Once you hit their official site, follow the steps shown in the screenshot. Just make sure that at the very last step, you select the version of macOS you're running, click "display results," and then hit download. Once the installer runs, you should be all set.