PC Freezing-Shutting down and restarts

[XGC Forsakend]

Hey guys, been a while.

Over the last couple of days, my PC has been freezing and needing a hard reboot, gave me one BSOD. Today it froze and upon doing a hard reboot, has started up, stopped before or at bios (Monitor didn't kick on) and then shutdown only to turn back on by its self 5 seconds later and shut down 5 seconds later in a repeating pattern. I had to flip the i/o switch in the back to get it to stop.

The BSOD gave me the Drv_IRQL_Not_Equal_To or something along those lines, which I took as a driver issue and reinstalled my GPU drivers as a clean install. The last thing I did before the issues started was update PUBG so I instinctively verified those files although I am sure that doesn't have anything to do with it specifically. But doing these things allowed me to play two games without issues strangely enough.

I will mention that it seems to happen while playing PUBG. After the game launches and I am in a match, it will freeze between 5 to 7 minutes into the game. Today it froze while I had the game in the background while I was waiting for some friends to finish their game, which means it can't be just the game anymore.

Is this a sign for a new pc?
Current PC was built new years of 2012
SPECS
i5 3570k
ASRock Z75
16 GB Ram
GTX 970 ACX 2.0 or along those lines
Corsair TX650
Windows 10 64 bit

Currently have a SSD for OS and a few programs as well as 2 HDD's. Will mention the only game on the SSD is PUBG.

I have tried checking my task manager and looking at cpu usage while PUBG is up and it seems to hover around 40-50% while PUBG is in the background. It goes and stays at 90-100% while game is being played.

I am currently looking at software to keep an eye on temp but I really don't think that is it as I know it would just shut off if it was overheating.

Any suggestions or should I just start ordering new parts to build a new one?
I currently have $1000 available if I go that route and was planning on rebuilding in June 2018. Could possibly go to $1300 if I push it but was hoping to have more saved up by then just to buy fancy unneeded lights and other dumb stuff.

Thanks for any replies or suggestions. I don't have time to game much as it is anymore but not being able to game is a hell all on it's own.

 

[XGC Forsakend]

A slight update:
Friend advised me it may be the GPU that could be on the way out instead of the CPU which I initially suspected.

I checked temps while running PUBG and nothing went above 60f and stayed in the high 50's.
Will try a few power management settings a friend suggested to see if it would help pinpoint the issue more. Will also try rolling back drivers in case that is the culprit.

 

[XGC Forsakend]

Update:
After tinkering with power settings and such, I started getting more BSOD's and is getting harder and harder to get PC to post. It is going into an endless failed to boot/restart cycle. Occasionally it works (Like now) only to BSOD and start over.

Some of the new BSOD errors I noticed were:
System Exception - unspecific
DRV Stack Overflow Buffer

I looked online and led me to do a chkdsk. After doing so, I started getting BSOD's much more often and saw another error msg I unfortunately couldn't snap a picture of quick enough. But it was a System Exception and mentioned a SYS file specifically.

I am now pretty confident it is a system file that has gotten corrupted and is causing issues. I am trying to ensure my Microsoft account is linked to my windows product key as it is saying it's a 'Digital License' and will probably be doing a clean install soon. Will try to save anything of importance to a spare HDD for now.

 

[XGC Forsakend]

Update:
I was wrong regarding the system file. Looks like the numerous hard reboots and freezes started damaging system files. I repaired windows and launched PUBG. Played 35 minutes till it froze, which is 3-7x longer than the 5-10 minutes till freeze.

Typing on phone so unsure if I mentioned but ruling out GPU since it is freezing even when simply browsing the web (such as this site) though it tends to take much longer and random (12-45 min).

Had my friend stop by and help me take a look today as well. Checked registry errors and such and i apparently had 4gb worth of errors there. He cleaned it out, we ran an intel cpu diagnostics (100% pass) and then tried waiting for a freeze.

Tried GTAV for 10 minutes, then launched PUBG for 50 minutes and no freeze.

We were about to call it fixed when we restarted it and it froze in the blue restart screen. Booted it back up, logged to desktop and hit shutdown and had it freeze once again.

Currently running a MEMTEST86 or whatever its called in hopes to see if it picks anything up. Otherwise we concluded it may be the motherboard on its way out.

Memtest has been running for 5+ hrs and it has 2 errors. Unsure how long it normally runs for tho. Was just told to let it boot into it.

Could anyone look at this and tell me what is says/means by chance?