Horizontal Lines

I have artifacting and horizontal lines on my screen but only while gaming. Any suggestions, it's not my parts they are top of the line, could this be caused by my crappy electricity in my apartment?

Answer

Most of the time when I've found this, it's usually caused by the video card over heating. First thing I do is clean my computer. Once you have it back together, see if the problem persists. If it still does, my next step is to remove the heat sink and fan from the video card, clean off the old thermal compound and use something good. Some video card manufacturer's use waxed based compounds, when you remove and work with the card, it can become unseated.

If the problem persists, it is most likely a faulty video card, but before you'd replace it, make sure you try a driver upgrade and check the manufacturer forums. Very often if you have a fairly new video card or are playing a new game driver issues arise from time to time.

Hope it helps, good luck.