Help: Possible Hardware Failure

[Spongebob]

I would love for that to be the case, but there's my computer restarting, crashing, and the monitor flickering off that has me suspecting hardware failure.

Thanks for your help on this, SB. I truly am clueless on this stuff as you probably already gathered. 

I haven't downloaded any of the heat detection stuff or anything yet. TBH it looks like I'll need to watch videos just to learn how to use the stuff. I've decided to get the external drive first because if the power supply fails, then I can just replace it. If the hard drive fails, I lost some shit.

It wasn't, like, super dusty in my computer. I was kinda hoping it was dust because, that's the cheapest one to fix.

Hmmm, well this does sound a bit more complicated.  I understand your frustration.  I think it was about 20 years ago when I didn't know anything going on inside the box until my computer started acting strange, so I just dug in and basically learned how to rebuild my computer.

Getting the backup is the best first step, so you don't lose any data.  I'll check a few things and get back to you; maybe give you some other ideas.