This is the place to be for all your computer hardware, peripheral and driver needs!
A few basic tips before jumping straight to a hardware problem. In the tech world, Occams Razor holds true. That is to say the conclusion with the fewest assumptions is likely correct (go for the simplest explanation). Sometimes a simple fix can actually solve your problem, and they present like an actual hardware issue.
First and foremost: Have you tried turning it off and back on again? No seriously, restart your computer, and in a more extreme case, fully power it off, disconnect it from power, depress the power button a few times to fully discharge power and turn it on again.
2) Ensure all your software is up to date, and your OS too. Ensure your GPU drivers are up to date. Do this by going into settings in windows, system preferences in macOS or your respective software center/terminal in Linux (this depends on your distro, but most commonly will be sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y for ubuntu)
Update your GPU drivers via the Nvidia app or in AMD's adrenalin. If you use an older amd GPU it will be found in catalyst. If you use an intel GPU (either iGPU or fully dedicated) intel graphics software
3) If you are blue-screening, check the bluescreen code, particularly if you have an overclock, it may not be stable.
heres some common blue screens I ran across, this is not exhaustive:
Clock watchdog timeout: raise your vcore, or drop your overclocks on the cpu, this can occasionally be due to ram as well, so the same applies.
Page Fault in Nonpaged Area: This is due to a bad ram overclock, back it off, or raise your memory voltage/system agent, and raise your CAS latencies if applicable.
WHEA Uncorrectable Error: CPU related, raise VCORE or drop the clocks
IRQL Not Less or Equal: RAM related, back it off or raise voltage
Change the settings and reboot, change only one setting at a time.
4) If you are crashing under load, most of the time it will be a bad overclock, check your ram and cpu overclock settings in the bios as seen in step 3 or back it off on the GPU, if you have done this, reset back to stock settings in MSI afterburner, evga precision X or a tool of your choice and select default, or a setting that says similar, and click apply.
5) If you are still crashing under load, check your temps using a utility like HWInfo. Note that this may not yield the most accurate results but the closer to TjMax you are (Thermal junction, a hard limit before thermal throttling), the worse off you are. Check for dust and your cpu cooler/GPU cooler fitment. Reapply thermal paste as needed.
6) If you are having strange OS behavior, open command prompt as an administrator and run sfc /scannow. This looks for corrupted OS files. On mac OS, open terminal and do diskutil verifyvolume, youll then want to enter recovery mode, open terminal here and then do diskutil repairvolume /volumes/drivename
7) If you are having strange wake from sleep behavior, time keeps desyncing and you are loosing BIOS settings, change your CMOS battery. This is a small, flat circular battery (CR2032). I recently had to do this because I was getting a no display on sleep despite loading into the bios properly.
This is not an exhaustive guide, but it will get you well on your way to seeing what the issue is before an expensive part is replaced needlessly.
As an addendum, the basic advice for mobile devices is more limited and generally the same regardless of manufacturer. You want to start with the LEAST INTRUSIVE options first, as a hardware fault either means an RMA/new phone/take it to a repair shop who may or may not bungle their soldering job
1) Force close your misbehaving apps via the app switcher. This clears it out from RAM and may address random slowdowns or crashes
2) Check for a software update from both the OS/app vendor, clear them from the app switcher anyways too to double check.
3) Check your battery health, this can cause performance throttling and rapid charge loss, check for any bulges on the back. If you see this..STOP USING THE DEVICE IMMEDIATELY. A swollen battery is a huge safety hazard, replace it or take it to a shop ASAP.
4) If applicable, roll back to an older version of Android, this is a complex procedure that I wont go into here as it is beyond the scope of what this FAQ style thing is supposed to be, back up your data before you do this.
5) Power off the device, and leave it off for 30 seconds, turn it back on.
6) This is the most intrusive: Back everything up, and just nuke the whole thing, restore to factory settings and start over.
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