PC crashes when gaming

[mjnielsen99]

Hi. My PC will crash after 30 minutes - 2 hours of gaming. It plays a loud single click noise in my headset, then freezes, and I have to hold down the power button. When turning it on again, there's an 80% chance it will happen immediately again, and I have to force restart it again, like 2-3 times. Sometimes when starting it up again, the Windows recovery screen will appear, saying Windows didn't load correctly. I just press restart my PC, and it works. Until I play a game agian.

 

Parts:

• i7 6700k (not OC'd, watercooled with Kraken X62, push/pull)
• GTX 1080 (watercooled with G12 + X42, push/pull)
• MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon
• 16GB HyperX Fury DDR4 2133MHz RAM
• EVGA Supernova G2 650 watt 80+ Gold PSU
• Samsung 500GB SSD
• 1TB, 3TB and 6TB HDD

 

I've tried the following:

• Several virus scans with different programs (Windows Defender, Malwarebytes and Bitdefender).
• Re-installing Windows (While keeping my files).
• Removing unnecessary programs I rarely use.
• Monitoring temperatures (not above 50-55c on both CPU and GPU)
• Making sure my parts are not running at 100% usage
• Disabling the Realtek High Definition Audio in Device Manager
• Updating GPU drivers
• Resetting CMOS

Thermal paste was changed last christmas, so around 1 month ago, on both CPU and GPU. I used Arctic MX-4, and I'm 100% sure I used enough, as I've changed it many times in the past.

 

I've had this problems for a week now, and some guy on Reddit suggested that I checked Reliability History. It said "Problem: Windows was not shut down properly. Date: X. Description: The previous system shutdown at X time on X date was unexpected. (Probably because I forced my PC to shut down with the power button)

 

When writing this post, I checked Reliability History again (1-2 days after checking it the first time). I have attached a copy-paste of the latest crash report. hardwareerror.txt

 

Hope someone can help me. Thanks a lotin advance.

[Crunchy Dragon]

What about a clean Windows install?

 

If Windows is having trouble booting, then that can indicate a problem with your install or boot drive.

[mjnielsen99]

@Crunchy Dragon Might be a stupid question, but if I do a clean Windows install, will I lose the data on my other harddrives? I have a lot of files, movies, games etc. stored on them, that I don't want to lose. Or should I just unplug all of my drives except for my boot SSD, and do a clean install from there?

[Crunchy Dragon]

8 minutes ago, mjnielsen99 said:

@Crunchy Dragon Might be a stupid question, but if I do a clean Windows install, will I lose the data on my other harddrives? I have a lot of files, movies, games etc. stored on them, that I don't want to lose. Or should I just unplug all of my drives except for my boot SSD, and do a clean install from there?

I would back up any vital data you want to keep, clean install on your boot SSD, and then format your other drives.

[mjnielsen99]

@Crunchy Dragon Alright, I'll try it as best as I can. I have a 1TB with data on I can't lose, but I don't know where to back it up to. I don't have any external harddrives, so I might just unplug it while reinstalling Windows. I also have a 3TB with Steam games that I'll format. And my last drive is a 6TB with movies. Currently 50% full, and I'll unplug that too.

 

If I don't get this resolved within a couple of days, I'm going to delete everything, even tho it's gonna be a pain to reinstall. Will have to buy an external HDD too to backup my important data from my 1TB drive. Thanks for the help, I'll be back probably tomorrow to update you with the results. Thanks again.