System Instability While Playing Games

[StayFrostyy]

Since last Monday, I have been experiencing severe system instability while playing games (e.g. Overwatch and CS:GO, since they're honestly the only two games I play). If I attempt to play a game for longer than three minutes or so, my computer will either blue screen, freeze completely (no keyboard shortcuts work), or it will restart my system without notice. I used the process of elimination to see what was causing the crash.

 

GPU - My first suspect was the GPU, as I installed new drivers the night before. I reverted back to older drivers and got a 30 FPS boost in Overwatch. Temperatures were also lower, and the game never came close to dipping below 60 FPS during the limited amount of time it actually ran before crashing. Definitely not the GPU.

Storage - The second suspect, as I got an msahci.sys blue screen somewhere in the mix. A quick run of chkdsk revealed absolutely nothing wrong with my HDD.

RAM - I wasn't able to run dual channel on my PC to begin with, and as was suggested by someone, it was possible that my RAM could have some bad sectors. I ran each stick of RAM individually, and both crashed within fairly equal amounts of time. But when I ran one stick in every slot on the motherboard, I noticed something strange. Slots 1 and 2 worked just fine, but running a stick in Slot 3 wouldn't allow me to boot into Windows. Putting a stick in Slot 4 wouldn't allow me to boot at all. The built in Windows Memory Diagnostic (I ran the Extended test) found nothing wrong with my memory.

PSU - It's a 550W SeaSonic, more than enough clean power for this thing. It's not the PSU.

This leaves only two possibilities; the CPU and the motherboard. Upon calling ASRock, they instructed me to remove my CPU from the board and inspect it for any bent pins. This would affect my memory and storage, and the AHCI, as the memory controller is on the CPU die. However, I never touched any of these pins at any time and I installed my CPU properly. Would this be the case, or is it the motherboard to blame?

[App4that]

Set everything to stock clock speeds. Flash the motherboard bios. Test.

[GoodBytes]

Moved to Troubleshooting.

[StayFrostyy]

2 hours ago, App4that said:

Set everything to stock clock speeds. Flash the motherboard bios. Test.

For some reason, updating my BIOS fixed the RAM not running in dual channel and any instability. Thanks for the help!