Computer randomly turns off when I play games

Whenever I play a graphics heavy game like guild wars 2, or Natural Selection 2 my computer will randomly shut off. It can be 5 minutes while i'm looking for a lobby, or 1 hour. It doesn't seem to matter. My computer specs are:

Processor: AMD Phenomon(tm)II x4 965 Processor 3.40 GHz
Ram: 12gb
Graphics card: Nvidia Geforce gtx 550 ti
Cpu model number: ep-600ne-xv

I am not as tech savvy as most of you here, so i'f i missed anything please let me know. Thanks in advanced.

 

Shut off as in totally just powers off? And only with graphic intensive games, normal use (web browsers, office, etc) run fine?
Could be your video card is getting too hot or perhaps the CPU is. Do you have to wait a few minutes after it shuts itself down before it'll boot back up? If so sounds like a heat problem.

Sam

 

Yep. Then I can turn in on instantly, and it acts as if nothing has happened. Checking email, watching movies or just browsing for hours has no effect.

 

open it up and eliminate the 1st possible prob, take the cover off and clean it with a brush and vacuum. cheers

 

My case is clean as a whistle. Since day one my case has been open, and cleaned on a regular schedule. I also windowed a game with speed fan on. The temp was recorded at 59c before it shut off. But thanks for the advice.

 

ok , im not a tec ok and im not saying anything about your knowledge of pc hardware,ect. did you remove the Processor at anytime without putting z3 on the back of it? sorry if i seem insulting mate, just looking at the simple things first ,,, i have the 550ti too, nice card. good luck, i hate pc car probs, oh that and power outages at the house and mistakening the flash light and vibrator

 

Your not being insulting. I'm just getting frustrated with this problem. It's been a couple months that this has been happening now. And I searched through countless threads with "solutions" that end up making no difference. I have check my bios, temps (graphics under heavy load gets to 80-89c while CPU under heavy load gets to 50-59c). I checked my psu to make sure that enought power is getting through, and I checked all my hardware to make sure that is all up to date. Is there a way that I can check my graphics card only under heavy load? That way I can single another factor out. Thanks to everyone that has posted here.

 

Well I eliminated heat as an issue. I installed new fans, and now my cpu under heavy load gets to 40c while the graphic gets to 50-60c under heavy load. And still my problem persist.

 

A PC that rudely shuts down almost always has one of two possible problems. Either it is overheating or the power supply is overloaded.
Since you have eliminated overheating, its time to try the power supply.
That GTX550 jumps from 130 watts to 250 watts when heavily utilized and; unless your supply has a 22 amp 12 volt "rail", it is underpowered. Most modern supplies have more than one 12 volt supply (AKA rail) and you need to check the real specs on it.
What is the make and model of the supply?

 

I solved the issue! My system was auto overclocking and restricting the ram that my graphics needed. after going into my bios and resetting everything to factory defaults then doing a stress test my system now runs normal. Thank you all for helping! :-D