SWTOR Damaged My i7 2600K

overclock my processor to 4.5GHz.

I have an i72600K and occasionally the fans will kick in and start whirring away like crazy, typically when I am either on or just been to Ilum.

If I press the windows key to get out of the game the fans immediately stop, if I then go back into the game its 50/50 whether the fans will kick in again, if they do I just repeat the process until it they stop.

Never hear my fans on any other game/app other than SWTOR.

oh... lucky guess

I'm about to make the move to a new system for 3D modelling and realtime rendering tests. It's just impossible to get the parts cheap in the UK atm, since theres a 20% tax on every piece of hardware you buy. So if a piece costs £1k GBP, it's actually 1.2k before shipping.

I've come to the conclusion that this game is literally dangerous to run on a gaming PC.

I know that can sound hard to believe for some, but let me explain.

To begin, here are my system specs:

Intel Core i7 2600K
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro heatsink/fan
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard
16GB Mushkin Blackline 2133MHz DDR3
2 x EVGA GTX460 1GB in SLI
Crucial M4 128GB SATA3 SSD 6Gb/s
WD Raptor Enterprise 10K RPM SATA3 3Gb/s
Creative XFi Platinum
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Cooler Master HAF932 Gaming Tower
Cooler Master 850W 80Plus Certified PSU
etc.

This is obviously a fairly powerful gaming rig and I built it and maintain it meticulously; actually I'm a PC repair shop owner and I've been involved in the PC industry for many years. I've been an avid gamer since the early 1980's.

I normally do not buy into conspiracy theories nor do I allow my opinion about games to be swayed by anything but my own experiences. But my experiences with this game have convinced me there's something seriously, seriously wrong with it.

I can actually get SWTOR to run quite well on my system. I can maintain 60FPS almost everywhere outside, running at maximum details at 1920x1200 resolution with all quality-improving options in the Forceware control panel enabled. The game plays wonderfully and I have no problem with it as a game itself. I run into frustrating chugging when indoors, curiously fluctuating very rapidly between 59 and 60FPS. This occurs when I'm near walls, inside caves or corridors, inside my ship, etc.

I've done many things and attempted many tweaks to try to alleviate that, but eventually I gave up. I realized that I could just temporarily disable VSync in-game when in those situations to have my framerate shoot up to the high 90's and even 100's which results again in liquid-smooth gameplay. Once back outside, reenable and go along my merry way.

So what's my problem?

I have, previously before playing SWTOR, been able to reliably overclock my processor to 4.5GHz with absolutely no stability issues whatsoever. My system was solid as a rock for at least six months prior, through many hours of maxed out and heavily tweaked Skyrim, through playing Battlefield 3, through RAGE, etc. My system was so stable I could leave it sitting in any one of those games, video cards also healthily overclocked, and not have a single worry.

Lately, however, I've started getting BSOD's in SWTOR. They started getting more and more frequent. I began to worry. The bluescreens even started occurring outside of SWTOR, like when running 3DMark11 or even while just browsing the internet! It should be noted that while playing SWTOR, especially with VSync disabled, my system fans speeds would definitely shoot up, with GPU temps often approaching 80C. This is okay for short gameplay sessions, but definitely not okay for hours on end.

This evening, I was finally able to restabilize my system, now at 4.4GHz, which isn't much to give up, but when you consider that I had to do so simply after a couple of weeks of playing a MMORPG that has such (comparitively) simplistic graphics, it's quite disturbing. I honestly believe that had I not been running a somewhat bullet-proof system, the damage may have been worse. I now need to keep a very careful watch on my rig to make sure everything else is okay.

A word of warning to you all: If this game is pushing your system to its limits, you should ask yourself if it's worth it to risk its reliability in the long term. I have canceled my account, deleted my credit card info from this website, and will be washing my hands of the whole thing. I probably won't be buying another BioWare game ever again, due merely to spite over this.

Good luck. You may want to consider getting out while you can.

BioWare, thanks a lot. You suck.

This is somewhat Alarming. My system, which is rather outdated now.
AMD Phenom x4 Quad Core Processor>
Nvidia Geforce 210 512mb GPU>

And I seem to have no problems with the game what so ever. Yes of course there is going to be some FPS issues but it's playable... ish. That's down to my graphics card.

Although there is a side effect. My computer runs like crazy! It's at the point where I actually have to get a Stand Fan (One for hot days which you sit infront of) pointing at my computer, with the window open! It just get's that hot! I play Skyrim with medium/low detail and it's so quiet!

Bioware need to step up for this. If ANY of your compoments are damaged, send them an email... Make it a angry one too.