A five-year-old device struggles to play games because it is outdated.
A five-year-old device struggles to play games because it is outdated.
I started this project with guidance from a more experienced tech friend. Please accept my apologies if I’ve asked too many simple questions—I designed the machine five years ago mainly for flight simulator play. It worked smoothly for four years until recently, when most games would crash after just five minutes of launch. It’s even more puzzling that they function perfectly until the end, then suddenly fail. I updated the graphics drivers from Nvidia and that briefly prevented the crashes for a day before they resumed. At the time, temperatures on both CPU and GPU were normal. Recently I performed a full clean and reset of the system, and now the issue persists. The desktop would only crash with certain games, but now it happens regardless. There are strange visual glitches and the machine shuts down repeatedly after restarting. It seems like a GPU problem. Are there any steps I can take to verify or fix this? Here are the specs: Intel Core i5-8600K, 3600 MHz, 6 cores, 32 GB RAM, MSI Z370 motherboard, HX750 power supply, GeForce GTX 1080, and a few video cards.
Initially, your graphics card is showing signs of trouble. You have a few choices: swap it out. A modern GTX 1080 offers solid performance without breaking the bank, making it a practical upgrade. Take it apart, replace the chip, and see if that helps. You can also reinstall the firmware to test. Try lowering its clock speed until it stabilizes, but be aware this is only a short-term solution and the issues will likely return as the card ages.