Please help me help a friend with his computer.

[Azureth]

My friend has a computer that used to be mine it's about 2-3 years old. I actually forgot the specs but I do remember it being pretty state of the art back when I built it. Anyway, for the past 2 weeks he has been having issues where whenever he starts a game it'll crash. At first he could play for about 10 minutes but now he says any game he starts will crash on the main menu screen.

He has taken off, and cleaned the heatsink and reapplyed thermal paste but that didn't help.

And his computer does not hard lock or crash itself, just any game he boots up.

 

[HeavensCloud]

Try a different PSU and GPU. Run memtest. Have him check temps of the CPU and GPU before starting game and up until crash.

 

[ob1]

Without knowing the system specs or the competence of the operator, I would suggest at starting with OS updates, driver updates and then monitor temps and such as a first step.

 

[PiSquared]

If the processor has integrated graphics, you may want to try yanking out the video card. If the games still crash, the problem could be the card or the power delivery to the card.

 

[5DVX0130]

What exactly do you mean with it crashes? Does it go back to Windows, does it freeze, restart…?
It would really help if you could post the system specs and a bit more about the crashes.

At the moment it sounds like a failing PSU or graphics card.

For now your friend should run Prime95. Test using the In-place large FFTs. If the system crashes it’s likely the PSU.
Link to the download page: http://www.mersenne.org/download/