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Try running your card at lower frequencies and if that doesn't work run an administrator CMD and execute the commands sfc /scannow and chkdsk /spotfix. That will ensure that any drive errors aren't causing the issue.

Fact is that 8 is faster and more efficient (particularly with RAM), it may have compatibility issues/glitches with a small majority of programs (only has happened to me with one game so far) and IMO it's new UI as a whole not just Metro is just easier to navigate once you get the feel for it. Maybe watching an in depth video on 8 will help you decide? Regardless they're both great Operating Systems so your experience with either should be good, simply think of 8 as a visual/efficiency upgrade for 7 as in terms of user experience not much else has changed.

Just download a cracked version of Sony Vegas or Adobe Premier.

Assuming that creating a secondary partition on your C: drive and installing Mac OS doesn't work. It could be possible by running a system image of your Windows OS on a secondary drive. After that just format your HDD and run the setup for dual boot (i myself don't know how to setup up dual boot but you could figure it out by googling it) then once you have installed Windows and Mac OS reinstall the system image on the windows partition. Or the simplest option is too just run Mac OS on a virtual machine using VM software (HyperV, VMware, Virtual Box etc) it may not perform as well as an actual OS installation but it'll do. I'd recommend using HyperV if your CPU supports Intel VT-X to minimise performance decrease.

Your GPU is fine,GPUs can easily handle temps up to 95c. As for the CPU IMO that is a bit hot (i'm paranoid about CPU temps mainly because mine was so expensive) so check if there is any dust gather up in the heatsink and clean it if so. Although if not you can always ramp up the fan using fan control software if you don't mind the noise or even downclock it a bit (maybe 3 Ghz? being an i7 it's IPC is more than sufficient for games at lower clocks), after all it's turbo frequency is an increase of 1 Ghz which in my experience temps rise ~10c for both my idle and load. If these don't help tell me what the CPU usage is when running said games and i'll try think of something else. PS: Your CPU's TJ max or fail safe shutdown/throttle temp is 105c so it should be fine but obviously it's dependant on whether the user is comfortable with said temps, a good rule of thumb is the cooler the CPU the longer it'll last and the less problems it'll have if any at all.

Based on the fact that you have no error stating that a failsafe had been activated it could very well be the PSU. Although just incase it isn't try standard system troubleshooting i.e. test for bad components, more often than not it's RAM.

Try booting to safe mode (yes i know it's a drag to to that with Win8) and open event viewer by right clicking the bottom left corner of desktop. Then if the was an error it will appear in administrative events. Copy and paste what is it provided an error is logged.

If your display is connected via HDMI ensure it is in all the way, this happens occasionally because the connecter is weak. Apologies for late reply been away from the computer for a few days.

The performance difference will be because of the CPU and RAM not because of 8x. Most cards will not saturate 8x rev 2.0, you may only notice a difference of 1-3 frames due to 16x being more efficient because the data is striped across 16 lanes rather than 8. As for the slot you may notice the heap of dust embedded under the pins which is likely shorting it out thus activating the motherboard failsafe. If it still crashes it is likely that the PCI-E chip for that slot isn't functioning properly. P.S. incase you were wondering the PCI-E chip/s are the 4 chips under the BIOS battery.

If the above doesn't work it could be the PCI-E slot and to verify that if you have a spare empty HDD do a fresh OS install, install all mandatory drivers, then install the most recent graphics driver and test a game the issue is occurring on. If you don't get the problem anymore it is your current windows image causing the problem .

Update your drivers the most recent whql is 320.18. Otherwise your card is faulty or your CPUs PCI-E controller isn't functioning properly. To be honest those temps for a cooler like the jetstream being triple fan provided that your ambient isn't high its a rip off and you should go with a more reputable brand like Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and EVGA. My Asus gtx 670 DCII loads at 65c max during the summer.

Fair enough. Feel free to ask if you want any recommendations.

If you still have issues and aren't getting similar performance to current 7950 benchmarks with same driver as yours. I'd recommend that if you have the money get a decent 1155/1150 board, an i5 ivy or haswell and 8GB dual channel 1600Mhz RAM, that will eliminate any hardware bottlenecks as the q6600 while it is still quite powerful a i5 4570 is effectively 2x faster in all circumstances, that and you will notice much power consumption due to speedstep. Take a look http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/622/Intel_Core_2_Quad_Q6600_vs_Intel_Core_i5_i5-4570.html

Maybe clean out the PCI-E slot that you suspect is faulty as dust may have got in there while you were changing the card. The smallest amount of dust can mess with the connections conductivity.