I have been having problems with my PC lately. If I play certain games (Far Cry 4, CoD Advanced Warfare showed this so far), after a random amount of time, the game freezes and becomes unresponsive. There is no error message, and the VGA/CPU does not overheat according to MSI Afterburner. My video card (MSI R9 270X Hawk 2GB GDDR5 PCIE) was faulty when I got it, and it was replaced under warranty. But I susoect it to be causing this problem as this series is known to be faulty.
Question: what (free) software can I use to test/diagnose my PC and to reveal what is causing these lockups?
Hm, new symptom: game locks up only in full screen mode, windowed mode seems to be fine so far. I played 30 mins in windowed mode; then I used ALT+ENTER to switch to full screen, and the game froze in that very moment.
Any thoughts/idea on this?
Uninstall and reinstall video drivers. Test again to see if it is still giving you problems
If it is, try a different driver for your card. Maybe beta drivers or an older revision.
Make sure the video card is in there correctly. Re-seat it if needed.
If you overclocked your video card, reset it to factory default. Sometimes when you mess with the clock rates, or more specifically the voltage it can cause your system to crash. Even if it's not overheating.