Hi,

My computer (which is old, so that may well be a problem) has developed a weird quirk. Every time I cold boot it (after being turned off via Windows) it works for a few minutes, then the computer freezes and the sound has this weird Megatron echo until it restarts. The weird thing is, though, that the BSOD stopcode is VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE (nvlddmkm.sys). In other words, it says the graphics card is the culprit.

After rebooting it works completely fine, no overheats, no errors, nothing. Gaming works completely fine, GPU temps are normal, no artifacts, zip.

It's driving me crazy because I can't figure out what the problem is. I also disabled fast boot and hybrid-sleeping but that didn't help, I lowered the clock on my CPU (it's ran a stable overclock for years) and RAM (which ran at factory specs). I also underclocked and undervolted my GPU to see if that changed anything but nope, same story. Start, BSOD, restart and it's set to go.

Is it something I haven't considered yet, or is it plain old hardware failure? My computer is a good 8 years old by now and I was planning to upgrade after Raptor Lake launched. So I hope that it can, at least, have its life extended until then.

Thank you in advance!

My specs :

CPU : Intel Core i7 4770K @ 4.3 GHz (don't remember the voltage but it's ran stable for years)
MoBo : MSI Z87-G45 Gaming motherboard (Latest BIOS installed)
RAM : Corsair Vengeance LP 1600MHz, CL9 DDR3 RAM (4x4gb)
GPU : Aorus GTX 1080Ti (Didn't overclock it, I let it boost and do its own thing)
PSU : Corsair AX760 (nearly 8 years old by now, intake fan behind dust filter which is regularly cleaned)
HDD 1 : Samsung 840 Evo 500GB SSD
HDD 2 : Samsung 860 Evo 1TB SSD
HDD 3 : Some old 1 TB HDD that I use for storage of photos, videos, that sort of thing.