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Yesterday my hubby's computer started having trouble. Computer would freeze, monitor would turn off and there would be no sound while playing D&D Online. Fans would still be runnings. It happens at random after playing for a few hours and there was nothing particularly graphic intense going on at the time. It occurred total of 4 times while playing DDO. Once while he was afk. After a reboot he would be able to start playing again right away. After the 4th time he opened up the computer, cleaned the dust out and then re-downloaded the graphics drivers.

Fast forward to past midnight, also known as Diablo 3 release time, it happened again. He launched Diablo 3. However somewhere after logging in and before getting to the character select screen the computer did it's crash again. This time it had only been on for a few minutes. This morning, he was able to launch the game and create a character and iplayed for a little less than an hour before it crashed.

His computer is a Frankensteins monster mix of old and new parts. Newest parts are his motherboard and processor (AMD 6 core) and ram (8GB) which are less than 9 months old. The hard drive is a little over one year old. The rest is over 5 years old. The graphic card is a Nvidia 7900gtx, the PSU is 1000w and it's running on winXP 64 bit.

I am going to have him run a virus scan and defrag today, but we are thinking it's a hardware failure. Is there some free program(s) we can run to narrow down the culprit? Or some other way to figure out what part is causing it. We want to leave the swapping parts with my computer as a last resort.

TLDR: Computer freezes while gaming. Black screen, no sound. Works again after reboot.

Sounds like a heat problem. Check out speedfan or another system temperature/fan utility. Make sure the CPU, graphics card, and hard drive temps are below 50C. Make sure that at least two fans are reporting over 1,000rpm. The temperatures can be higher before they automatically shut down, but if they run that hot when you're not doing anything, then the system is going to have problem when you run CPU/graphics intensive games.

Given your description I suspect an overheating graphics card, or failing power supply. Depending on the motherboard and processor it could be an overheating processor.

Speedfan will give you the cpu, gpu, chipset, and hd temperatures, and the speed of your fans so you can figure out what's overheating, and whether all your fans are spinning fast enough or not. That should narrow the problem down a bit.

Also test the hell out of your RAM with Memtest86. I was having similar problems and I found out that not only was one of my RAM sticks faulty but my memory controller also bit the dust).

Do stienman's suggestion first though.

Does the computer have any other troubles? Locking up while booting? Problems loading windows?

Update! Computer now wont turn on at all. There has been no burning smell at all. My hubby took a deep wiff of the inside of his computer. So hoping that means it's a minor thing. Thinking failing power supply myself. The thing is almost 10 years old.

Yeah, go for the power supply first.

Whatever you do, don't get a thermaltake PSU. I figured that out this weekend.

Ok, NOT the power supply. He hooked up my PSU and still no sign of life. No lights or fans spinning. Does this mean it's most likely a dead motherboard or can a dead graphics card or hard drive have that effect? There were never any odd graphical glitches that I would normally associate with a faulty video card. Regardless, he called the online store he bought the motherboard, processor and ram from. Apparently he has a one year warranty with the store and the very helpful rep suggested he'd just ship it all back and they would send replacements. So hopefully it's one of those 3 things and not the GPU, HD or the tower.

Try disconnecting everything from the PSU except the power switch, power supply, memory, and CPU. Take out all the cards, disconnect the drives, etc.

If it still doesn't power up, then it's likely the motherboard.

If it does power up, then your power supply doesn't have enough power to power everything else, and you need a new power supply (600W or better, probably).

Do make sure you have all the motherboard power cables plugged in - there are two.

Update!

It's the video card. After grumpily using my computer for 3 weeks we now have enough moolah to spare to buy a <$200 graphics card. whatgfx.com actually suggests that Radeons are a better buy at that price, but my hubby has always favored Nvidia so he may or may not veto that idea.

Any suggestions for both AMD and Nvidia for 175ish dollars? Also, what specs should I look out for/avoid when looking at newegg.

lol, I just saw the title of this thread and popped in to say "Video card."

With ATI, your budget puts you at about a 6850/6870, but I would highly recommend moving up to 7850 (about 250) if you can.

With NVIDIA you are looking at something in the GTX 560 series. Prefer the Ti version instead of the normal, and prefer the 448 over the Ti (but I think the 448 versions will push you to 300 and above). You can get a 560 for about 160 and a 560Ti for around 220.

All prices based on NewEgg's prices for new-in-box retail cards.

--Patrick