My cousin's PC has got a problem I just can't figure out.

It has i7 920 and GTX 275 for GFX. Whenever I run a game on it (any game, CS 1.6, TF2, Portal, Minecraft) after about 30-60 seconds it starts to lag and the sound also fucks up. If I do not close the game and shut down the PC I get a BSOD. Regardless of how it shuts down when I start it back up and start the game, it works fine and I can play. So usually if the PC has been off for a few hours and I start it up and start a game it lags up I have to shut down and start again and then play.

Any idea what could be causing that? I searched a lot online but whatever the problem is gets fixed after a restart, so I don't even know what to search for exactly...

 

Temps can cause the PC to freeze up or cause BSOD. PC's have to be a certain temp, or it screws up, and can cause hardware problems (burning them out, causing them to not work at all).

 

Oz and Richard are correct in some cases.

But I had this same issue some years ago, and it was my power supply putting out substandard amounts of power, instead.

I'd say do what they recommended first, but if that doesn't work/reveal the issue, take a look at maybe trying out a different power supply.

 

I thought it was the temps, but it isn't, I checked.

Even if it was, why does the problem fix after a restart?

That's the part I don't understand.

 

First off, what does the BSOD say? If you haven't already, stop it from automatically restarting on system failure so that you have time to read it and write it down.

 

It might be really dusty inside the PC itself. There was a time when my PC started to lag a bit and when i checked the temp, it was around 80 degrees and rising. I found that highly unusual as the max temp I found my PC to be when gaming is 60 degrees. I cleaned the inside of my CPU and took out a lot of dust. After that, its been running smoothly again.