All games crash randomly after about 1-3 hours

[Araphen]

My friend's gaming computer just stopped working along with the smell of "something burning" one day and he asked if I could try to fix it.  It was very dead.  Pushing the power button literally did nothing.  No lights or sounds or fans spinning up for a second.  I started testing the parts and found out that his $50 MoBo had died/fried.  There was also a sata cable with one end plugged into the MoBo and the other with the plastic broken off exposing the contacts.  So I was thinking maybe it touched something metal and shorted the sata port causing the whole thing to die, but I’m not sure that’s just a guess.  For all I know, I broke the cable by accident opening it up to figure out what was wrong.

 

I suggested a replacement MoBo, he bought it, I put it in and it started to work fine.  I even did a clean install to make sure there wouldn't be any driver problems.  After he had reinstalled all of his favorite games, he tried playing them but they would crash randomly after about 1-3 hours of playing.

 

The games he’s tried playing are:

- Crusader kings 2

- Stalker shadow of chernobyl

- Rollercoaster tycoon 3

- Final fantasy 14

- Burnout paradise

and like 5 others, they all crash randomly.  Other programs like skype, chrome, steam, etc. didn’t crash.

 

 

Here’s what we’ve tried already, roughly in this order:

- Check disc on his only HDD

- Reinstalling drivers

- Trying different drivers

- Reinstalling the OS twice + drivers again

- Checking for overheating issues (everything was running at around 50-60C)

- We found out that the MoBo was reading the ram incorrectly.  They were 11-11-11-28 but the specs for the RAM were supposed to be 9-10-9-28 so they were changed in BIOS to that.  Still no fix.  (I don’t know much about changing clock speeds on RAM.)

- Memtest86

 

I’m afraid that when the mobo fried it damaged other components and he’ll have to spend way more money to replace everything.  I’m hoping that’s not what the problem is and it’s just a super easy fix that I’ve just overlooked.

 

 

Specs:

There’s gonna be a dxdiag at the bottom but here’s a dumbed down version:

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.150316-1654)

CPU: AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core Processor

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti

MOBO: MSI 970A-G43

RAM: 8GBs

HDD: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 ATA Device (1TB)

PSU: Rs-600-amba-d3 600w

MoBo BIOS version: Date: 03/28/13 16:31:10 Ver: 04.06.05

 

 

Programs running in background:

Chrome, skype, steam, and malwarebytes

 

 

Error message:

When the games crash, no error message pops up.  The windows event viewer shows something though:

1. Faulting application name: ffxiv.exe, version: 1.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5530d305

2. Faulting module name: nvd3dum.dll, version: 9.18.13.3221, time stamp: 0x52b324bd

3. Exception code: 0xc0000005

4. Fault offset: 0x00664047

5. Faulting process id: 0x360

6. Faulting application start time: 0x01d08434fe1b7cc7

7. Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game\ffxiv.exe

8. Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\nvd3dum.dll

9. Report Id: 9865c404-f029-11e4-843b-d8cb8a50e817

 

Any ideas as to what it might be or suggestions on what to do, will be greatly appreciated by both me and my friend.

DxDiag.txt

[FireFox]

Malware doesn't need to be running mate, just use it as a scanner when needed. Anyway what temperatures are you getting?

[BentheMuffin]

Any ideas as to what it might be or suggestions on what to do, will be greatly appreciated by both me and my friend.

Probably RAM or psu was damaged. MY guess would be psu because it is only crashing under heavy load. Also follow your topic.

 

Malware doesn't need to be running mate, just use it as a scanner when needed. Anyway what temperatures are you getting?

He said around 50-60C.

[Araphen]

Malware doesn't need to be running mate, just use it as a scanner when needed. Anyway what temperatures are you getting?

We've already tried removing malwarebytes and still had the problem.

We kept spot checking the temps and it was always something between 50-70C but the 70C was the GPU under load.

[Araphen]

Probably RAM or psu was damaged. MY guess would be psu because it is only crashing under heavy load. Also follow your topic.

Wouldn't memtest86 find problems with the ram? 

 

I have one of those cheap 5 dollar PSU testers.  I tested it with that but i'm guessing theres no chance of that catching this kind of problem is there?.  

 

Also i thought following a topic was the same as just keeping it open and watching it constantly which is what i'm doing.

[Araphen]

We fixed it.

 

The solution was either:

BIOS update for the motherboard which involved better compatibility with memory

or

We swapped his 125w 8 core CPU with a 95w 4 core CPU since his motherboard wasn't rated for 125w CPUs, even though the website lists 125w CPUs as compatible which might be false advertising but I'm not a lawyer.

 

My guess is the BIOS update fixed it and the CPU swap will just make his motherboard live longer this time.

 

 

Gotta say, I'm a little disappointed in how much you guys tried to help.  Did I just give too much info and people were overwhelmed?  Cause I was reading the "Read before asking for help" sticky which made me feel like I should be as detailed as possible.

[Chavez300]

i know i'm late but i like how no one looked at nvd3dum.dll.....

 

by a easy google search and as it not a fix it have more info on this 

 

the more info you have the easier it will be to find the fix

[Araphen]

by a easy google search and as it not a fix it have more info on this 

wut