Just an update for anyone that cares.
The crashing problems I've been having were the result of my PSU. I had an 850W Bronze and had overclocked my GPU. I thought the OC was only in effect when I had Afterburner open, but evidently it saves the last setting you had. Evidently the PSU was perfectly fine until I opened a much more graphics intensive game (ie my favorites). Which would result in the GPU losing power and getting what I can only find online as being called the Brown Screen of Death.
Just got and installed a new PSU, 1000W Gold, works perfectly and won't have to upgrade anything for a while longer! Wonderful news as my 1150 socket Mobo isn't produced anymore and the next step up (1151) won't hold my CPU, so I would have had to drop almost a grand to get a comparable CPU.
I'll probably post here again in almost a year asking for help building my new computer, but I'll have a budget by then.