Can someone make a summary so I can see what the exact problems are and try and help?
When gaming, the PC will crash. It might be 4 hours into a session or it could be 1. But the game just crashes, screen freezes on the game, and sometimes the audio goes weird (stuttering, crazy distortion sounds), the PC loses functionality (can't open Task Manager, can't alt+tab, can't ctrl alt del) - but the fans remain on - and I need to hold the power down for 5seconds and turn it back on again.
Specs are in the OP.
This happened with the same build using my old GPU (7850 OC, Gigabyte, 2GB) and my EVGA 1070 SC.
Steps I've taken:
1. First occurrence - update all drivers. This lead to a W10 boot failure/BSOD. Reformatted. Updated all drivers. Updated MOBO BIOS.
2. Second attempt to fix (when it reappeared) - test RAM using memtest86. Tested each stick individually until it achieved 8 "Pass" marks - each stick achieved with 0 errors.
3. Replaced the SSD (now using a Samsung 850 PRO 256GB). Fresh W10 install. Updated all drivers. Didn't update BIOS (BIOS version was too recent (Jan2017) so didn't want to risk it just yet). The error occurred again just now.
Turning off CPU OC - crashed when gaming.
Swapping SATA ports around with SSD/HDD - crashed when gaming - although one time here, the PC just reset in game. Like, bam, restart, login screen.
8 hour prime95 28.10 stress test; no errors found
1 hour Unigine Heaven stress test; crashed, took the PC with it
4 hour Unigine Heaven stress test; crashed, didn't crash the PC
Turning off Geforce Experience - crashed when gaming
Installed new PSU - crashed when gaming
Right now, I've just taken out the HDD (secondary storage) as I ran chkdsk and had a lot of errors (Errors detected in sparse file record segment ... (probably 200+ entries here) Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode). I've had no crashes for 3 hours in game, which is a good sign, but i have no idea anymore.
The next crash, planning to do as Evolution of Metal outlined above to identify which part is causing the issues.