Blue screen when gaming - BIOS update?

[jijilicious]

Hello i hope you guys can help me and bear with me because I don't really know ANYTHING about computers =\ i've been having a problem lately when i've been playing a game for about five to ten minutes, or sometimes I can play it for half an hour without anything happening. But after a while it freezes and I get a blue screen saying the system has had to shut down and that something may not have been installed correctly. Anyone know how I can solve this problem? I've been looking at other people who have had similar problems and theirs seems to have been solved once they updated their BIOS. Since my comp is custom made from this website I have no idea how to do that or even if it would work =\ I found american megatrends is mine, but when i go to their website its not very helpful, since as I said I have a custom compy.

So yeah any help would be appreciated =\ =\ thanks

 

[vanthus]

Have you tried a clean install of the graphics driver.

 

[mantadog]

I wouldn't touch a bios update at this stage, it is one of the few things that can actually brick your PC even if you do everything 100% correctly.

Grab some software that can monitor the temps like this one. http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Keep an eye on the temps on the CPU and GPU, report the max figures back here and it should give an idea if its related to temps at all.

Otherwise it might be worth re seating the GPU, but as I sense your not too comfortable inside the chassis I will leave that for later.

 

[ubuysa]

It would help if you could post the error on the blue screen you get.

If you're running Windows 7 you'll get a blue screen with lots(!) of white text. Near the bottom at the left hand side is a Stop Code, it will look something like 0x0000000A, post that number here.

If you're running Windows 8/8.1 then you'll get a blue screen (with a sad face) and some text indicating the error, this will look something like IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, post that text here.

There's no guarantee of course, but that error code or text might help us figure out why you had the BSOD. Since it happens when gaming and after a short while I'm inclined to think mantadog is on the right track and it's shutting down because it's overheating. Get the software he (she?) suggests and report back on the temperatures you see.

I also agree that the BIOS is not likely to be your problem and in any case you have to be very careful when you mess with that.