Yay @ english-speaking goodness
Alright:
Yes, there still might be more reasons as for why the computer randomly crashes while gaming.
First things first; it's never a bad idea to update the GPU's drivers. That might solve the problem, who knows?
Let us list all of the reasons all in all:
1. Many games may detect illegal OS's, and thus after a while: randomly crash.
Especially games from EA. Solution: fix (install) a legit OS.
2. The "generous amount" of thermal grease may also be the problem (also a very likely one, just saying) since overheated CPU's tend to cause crashes. And games, as we all undoubtedly know, require a tonne of gaming-power = a lot of heat = a very likely crash. Solution: remove some, or re-apply the thermal grease in a more proper manner.
3. Those lines that were mentioned; those are a
classic example of a shortened graphics card (I've seen a lot of them in my IT-support career). The card might still be functional, but may act up on different occasions. Possibly, crash the PC every now and then. And since the games use the GPU a lot, well... the GPU might be the problem. Solution: change graphics card and observe the differences.
Note: doing so might (a high risk) be an economic setback. Nearly all EA games released after SecuROM became involved, 15 May 2008, have a maximum of allowed installs per game. Changing the graphics card might trick the game into thinking that it's all of a sudden a new computer = one installation will be used up = all SecuROM-based games will lose 33% or 20% of their value, as the disks become less useful (lesser installations left per game). With a lot of EA games, that's a lot of money.
The third option should not be tried unless option 1 and 2 have been ruled out. One wouldn't want to play with a loaded shotgun so to speak.
Note: as the computer only crashes during gaming (if I understood it correctly?) and from what we've seen on this forum: then only the following components are suspected of being the villain in this drama:
- The OS. (non-legit part)
- The GPU, Graphics Processing Unit (for instance, a capacitor could have been shortened during a routine cleaning or something)
- The CPU, (thermal grease part)
All other components have alibi's as for why they could not be the problem.
