Can Skyrim damage my gaming pc?

[YawningAngel]

I hated oblivion but gave skyrim a shot and love it. I hear about people on pc's and ps3's having lag issues that turn into crashes on save files with long gameplay hours. There is a rumor going around that this problem is due to a memory leak that builds on itself the longer one plays the game. Now I have noticed more lag now than I had at level 1, and I have had a crash to desktop while in mid conversation. Will this memory leak damage my pc through something called thrashing?
Im about 57 hours in.

Thanks

Open Task Manager while you're playing and tell me how much RAM is being used. While you're at it, tell me how much RAM you have in your system and whether you're on 32 bit.

And no, you should not be able to damage components with non-retarded drivers and specifications just by running a resource-heavy program on them unless the specification says that they can't be used at full load for significant periods of time.

Disclaimer: technically you CAN damage components in this way, but it really shouldn't happen.

6 gigs of ram windows 7 64 bit
Opening up oblivion...ok just opened it and its reading 725,440
according to the posts traveling to cities and entering homes/dungeons causes the leak

I dont know what to make of those numbers but cheers

Thrashing is not your issue then. (probably)

 

[Me55enger]

Only if you get so angry after being killed for the 47th time by a Murderboss Deathking that you punch your GPU.

In other news, has anyone got a spare GPU I could have?

 

[RicoADF]

Thrashing is what happens when you run out of memory, so the computer stores stuff In the page file instead. The page file will be on your HDD (or SSD) which is much slower than memory. As a result, the disk has to work very hard, resulting in hardware thrashing. This may result in damage to your hard drive. If you have an SSD, I imagines the worst to happen will be reduced performance. If the hard drive access light is blinking constantly during play I would advise that you wait till the issue is fixed.

Man I just did some research on that hard drive access light. Thanks for telling me! I do remember seeing it light up but never knew what it was. Most of my lights are blue but the hard drive light is orange when it lights up..does that mean anything? I will definitely pay attention to it when gaming and consider it an indication that my pc could use a break.

I'm no techno-wizard, but I think it just indicates that the drive is being accessed. It's not particularly a warning light or anything.

That's correct, the hard drive is accessed all the time when playing games and even just general usage as the computer will cache files on the hardrive that aren't in use but may be needed in a hurry etc.
Technically it shouldn't cause any damage, as stated by another user above as long as your system isn't over clocked or over heating then it shouldnt be damaged by working hard, however the hard drive (especially mechanical one) could be worn out faster if its put under constant heavy usage as theorised by the people complaining about 'thrashing'. However to have any noticable effect you'd have to do it over an extended period of time, its basically just a case of the hardrive being worn out faster, they will fail eventually anyway.

 

[Mr Jack]

Thrashing is what happens when you run out of memory, so the computer stores stuff In the page file instead. The page file will be on your HDD (or SSD) which is much slower than memory. As a result, the disk has to work very hard, resulting in hardware thrashing. This may result in damage to your hard drive. If you have an SSD, I imagines the worst to happen will be reduced performance. If the hard drive access light is blinking constantly during play I would advise that you wait till the issue is fixed.

Man I just did some research on that hard drive access light. Thanks for telling me! I do remember seeing it light up but never knew what it was. Most of my lights are blue but the hard drive light is orange when it lights up..does that mean anything? I will definitely pay attention to it when gaming and consider it an indication that my pc could use a break.

By itself, the light is not indicative of unusual usage. As you are on pc, open task manager while the game is running and see how much memory and paging file you are using while it is running. As you said you have 6GB, you should only see page file usage if there is a memory leak.

The risk of drive failure is small, but it may reduce the lifespan of your drive if thrashing is occurring. A replacement would be costly right now, so I wouldn't push it if you are experiencing thrashing.