Computer rebooting at random after buying GTX 760 graphics card

[Urt]

I just bought myself a new graphics card, a GTX 760, to be able to play Watch Dogs, but after installing it yesterday my computer has rebooted randomly 3 or 4 times. Only pattern I've noticed so far (and it might just be a coincidence) is that it's always happening OUTSIDE of the game, but that's the only semblance of pattern so far...

I've had a similar problem before, which went away after I got new coolers in my cabinet, so my guess is that it might be related to overheating in some way?

My power supply is a "corsair vx550w". From what I've read it should be enough, but I'm including it just in case. The more info the better I assume.

My system information is as follows:
Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name BOB-PC
System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model GA-970A-DS3
System Type x64-based PC
Processor AMD FX(tm)-8150 Eight-Core Processor, 3600 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. F1, 09-01-2012
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale Danmark
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name Bob-PC\Bob
Time Zone Romance Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8,00 GB
Total Physical Memory 7,98 GB
Available Physical Memory 5,78 GB
Total Virtual Memory 16,0 GB
Available Virtual Memory 13,5 GB
Page File Space 7,98 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

I'm in no way a computer expert, quite the opposite tbh, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

[dextermat]

Hi,

You may want to download bluescreenview and poost us the details, might have clues what makes it crash.
What GPU did you have before. You might want to cleanup the GPU drivers and do a fresh install.

 

[Urt]

Hi,

You may want to download bluescreenview and poost us the details, might have clues what makes it crash.
What GPU did you have before. You might want to cleanup the GPU drivers and do a fresh install.

Whauw, that's some quick answerin' there! Thanks

It's not a blue screen of death I get, it's more like a reset similar to if I'd just clicked the reset-button on the side of my tower, so from what I can see on the bluescreenview-site they won't get any info on my crashes? Is there another program I could use though? 'cause it sounds like a good idea to get some kind of info out of my crashes

My previous graphics card was a fairly old AMD radeon card of some kind, I've actually forgotten the exact model and it doesn't say anything specific on the card itself I'm afraid. I uninstalled my old drivers when I got the new card, but upon closer expection I can see that I still had some old AMD-crap lying around on my disc, so I've manually deleted that now.

Edit: found out what I'd written first didn't make much sense, so changed it into something that hopefully did 😉

 

[Urt]

New update!

Had another couple of crashes after deleting my old AMD-files, so that's not the cause apparantly.

What I just noticed during my last reset though, was that 10 secs or so before it happened, I had a couple of seconds of weird small graphical glitches on my screen, nothing major, odds are I wouldn't even have noticed them if it hadn't been because they appeared exactly the same time as I could hear my tower giving off small sounds, so each time a little sound came a glitch came too. Both the sounds and the glitches where very minor, but when pairing them up together it was pretty clear that something weird was going on.

Is it possible that my graphics card isn't compatible with my motherboard or something like that? (I really hope not, as that sounds expensive, but would be nice to know).

 

[Urt]

And yet another update!

Tried having my computer complain during the game too now and not just outside of it, happened twice so far. Both times where during high speed car chases, which makes sense I guess, since I assume all the graphics it has to quickly render there will put some extra strain on the system?

What happened was simply that the game slowed down to a crawl. We're talking less than a frame pr sec, but it was still running (or trying to at least). The controller also went crazy and just started vibrating for ages, since me colliding with another car effectively took ½ a min or something like that 😉

All in all it's pretty clear that something is wrong, and that it's related to my graphics card, I just still haven't got any clue what exactly it is. Is it simply a faulty card? Is it my motherboard that doesn't want to cooperate with it? Is it my power supply? (pretty sure it isn't, but you never know).

I hope someone will be able to help

 

[oxiide]

It's not a blue screen of death I get, it's more like a reset similar to if I'd just clicked the reset-button on the side of my tower, so from what I can see on the bluescreenview-site they won't get any info on my crashes? Is there another program I could use though? 'cause it sounds like a good idea to get some kind of info out of my crashes

I'd give it a try anyway. My understanding is that there are some system settings that can result in your machine simply rebooting instead of going to an actual blue screen, even though the problem would normally result in a blue screen. If that's the case, crash logs may still be present for BlueScreenView to parse through.

 

[Urt]

It's not a blue screen of death I get, it's more like a reset similar to if I'd just clicked the reset-button on the side of my tower, so from what I can see on the bluescreenview-site they won't get any info on my crashes? Is there another program I could use though? 'cause it sounds like a good idea to get some kind of info out of my crashes

I'd give it a try anyway. My understanding is that there are some system settings that can result in your machine simply rebooting instead of going to an actual blue screen, even though the problem would normally result in a blue screen. If that's the case, crash logs may still be present for BlueScreenView to parse through.

Deffinatly worth a shot then, I'll give it a try and see if I can provoke a crash or two when I get home tonight

 

[JeckeL]

I've been having this exact same problem and I think I've narrowed it down to either a PSU or GPU issue (my current PSU is a cruddy off-brand and I just ordered a new seasonic 650w so i'll let you know if that solves my problem). How long have you had the current PC before you bought the 760? For me I've had my PC for about 1 year, and everything worked perfectly for the first 6 months and then (without any hardware changes whatsoever) it started happening. It's exactly like you're saying, I'll be playing a graphically intensive game and at random times *click* everything instantly dies, and after a second or two the PC automatically boots back up. It almost never happens if I'm playing something simple like Spelunky.

Also what I've noticed is that whenever I start up a game like devil may cry, path of exile, etc, I can hear a "coil whine" electrical zapping sound coming from my GTX 550 ti and the card temperature almost instantly shoots up from 90F to 150F, even if I downsize the game to the desktop the coil whine noise instantly stops and the temperature drops back down to 90F after a few seconds. Then as soon as I bring the game back up the noise comes back and temperature goes back up to 150F fairly quickly. I didn't think it had anything to do with heat in the past because I would check temperatures AFTER a reboot would occur which everything looked normal probably because the card had cooled down quite a bit since the restart.

I wouldn't think 150F video card temperature is enough to cause crashes like that but it does seem unusually hot, especially for how quickly it shoots up to 150F after simply opening a game and not even having to play at all, the coil whine noise starts and the temperature skyrockets. What temperature does your card run at when you're playing watchdogs? After playing for a few minutes downsize it and open a temperature monitoring program (you can find many of these by googling, or rather look for a thread on here of someone asking for temperature program recommendations so you don't get jerked around by google search advertisements :lol

 

[oxiide]

snip

150 °F is only 65 °C, which is an excellent temperature while gaming. Its normal for the temperature to rapidly increase back to its normal load temperature when you return to a game (because GPU usage will also shoot back up to 100%). If your video card is having problems, its not temperature related. Coil whine is usually not indicative of a problem with the card, but its very annoying and often worth a warranty claim.

I too thought OP's power supply might be involved, but the fact that he said he's crashing everywhere BUT in games (that is, at times of low PSU load and lower temperatures) makes that seem less likely. Sounds a lot more like driver-related crashing, and he's just not seeing the usual BSoDs for a variety of possible reasons.

 

[oxiide]

Had another couple of crashes after deleting my old AMD-files, so that's not the cause apparantly.

Sorry for the randomness, but I just noticed this. When you install drivers, they put a lot of stuff into the system registry as well, stuff that you can't easily see (unless you're really, really pro at RegEdit, anyway). Those entries may not always get completely deleted when you uninstall. The files and folders that you're able to see and delete manually are the least concern, chances are they were already inert.

If it had been me, I'd have just planned to reformat/reinstall Windows at the same time I installed the new video card. Maybe more of a pain in the ass, but its a good way to be sure.

Alternatively, you can try software like CCleaner (the registry clean part) or Driver Uninstaller to get rid of all the AMD stuff that may be left behind in the registry and system files.

 

[Urt]

Had a crash earlier with BlueScreenView running, and sadly there was no info when I restarted. Gonna try and keep it running still though, just in case.

IHow long have you had the current PC before you bought the 760?

I think I've had my current PC for 2-3 years. I must admit I'm not completely sure...

I too thought OP's power supply might be involved, but the fact that he said he's crashing everywhere BUT in games (that is, at times of low PSU load and lower temperatures) makes that seem less likely. Sounds a lot more like driver-related crashing, and he's just not seeing the usual BSoDs for a variety of possible reasons.

Just to be 100% clear, I've had a few "semi-crashes" in-game, screen and sound acting like I'm running on an old Commodore 64, but yeah, I've only had "true crashes" where my computer actually reboots outside of games.

If it had been me, I'd have just planned to reformat/reinstall Windows at the same time I installed the new video card. Maybe more of a pain in the ass, but its a good way to be sure.

Alternatively, you can try software like CCleaner (the registry clean part) or Driver Uninstaller to get rid of all the AMD stuff that may be left behind in the registry and system files.

I have now tried running CCleaner (which I actually already had installed, but just hadn't though about using. DOH!) and Driver Uninstaller, and it looked like they deffinatly caught some files that I'd missed, so gonna try and see what happens from here. I guess it's best to try one method at a time to truly find out what works.

Thanks again-again for everyone's help, I really really appreciate it!

 

[Urt]

Woops, forgot to answer this one

What temperature does your card run at when you're playing watchdogs?

Played for about an hour and highest temperature logged was 82*C/179*F. Session stopped when again it all slowed to a crawl and I had to close the game via the task manager.

 

[JeckeL]

What manufacturer made the GTX 760, and are you using the driver that came on a disc with the card, from the manufacturers site, or nvidias site?

 

[Urt]

What manufacturer made the GTX 760, and are you using the driver that came on a disc with the card, from the manufacturers site, or nvidias site?

The manufacturer is Zotac. I started out using the drivers on the disc, but got the Nvidia ones to make sure I had the newest version after things started getting weird.

Been playing Divinity: Original Sin pretty much 24/7 the last couple of days, resulting in no crashes at all in-game but still getting a couple when browsing or doing other non-game-stuff. I'm not sure if any of the crashes have actually happened outside browsing, so gonna start to write down exactly what I was doing each time I crash from now on, maybe that'll help.

I tried running the heat-tracker while playing Divinity too btw, and again the highest temperature logged was 82*C/179*F. As I wrote before, nothing happened while playing, but it's still too high for comfort isn't it?

The BlueScreenViever sadly doesn't pick them up, so can anyone recommend another program that might do the trick and log the crash-data?

 

[Urt]

3 resets so far since last post. 2 of them while actively browsing using Firefox, one of them while just having Firefox open and me actually not touching the computer at all 'cause I was texting on my phone.

Gonna try and reinstall Firfox and see if that helps. Getting kinda desperate by now.

 

[Urt]

Well, that didn't take long. Still able to crash after a fresh install. Even made sure it used a new and empty profile in case it was something weird in my old profile that did it (no idea if that's even possible, but better safe than sorry I thought 😉 ), but it seems it didn't have anything to do with Firefox. Back to the drawing board!

 

[JeckeL]

Got my PSU (SeaSonic S12II 620w) on friday and haven't had any reboots since, although it has gone a few days without rebooting in the past so I am in no way out of the frying pan but at least it's looking promising. Especially since I was gaming all day saturday & sunday and it seemed to happen primarily on those two days (probably because it would be running all day as opposed to just a few hours per night on weeknights). I'll let you know if the new PSU has fixed my problem or not.

The only other thing I can think of (aside from the new GPU itself even thought it only happens when you're not gaming) would be memory; looking back through the thread I don't see any mention of that, so:

1) Do you have multiple sticks of memory? Such that you can try 1 stick at a time and see if it crashes?
2) Can you run memtest and see if any errors come back?

 

[Urt]

Just got back after a few days of vacation, so haven't had a chance to try anything since my last post. Sorry I didn't mention it before leaving, would have been the polite thing to do...

Got my PSU (SeaSonic S12II 620w) on friday and haven't had any reboots since, although it has gone a few days without rebooting in the past so I am in no way out of the frying pan but at least it's looking promising. Especially since I was gaming all day saturday & sunday and it seemed to happen primarily on those two days (probably because it would be running all day as opposed to just a few hours per night on weeknights). I'll let you know if the new PSU has fixed my problem or not.

The only other thing I can think of (aside from the new GPU itself even thought it only happens when you're not gaming) would be memory; looking back through the thread I don't see any mention of that, so:

1) Do you have multiple sticks of memory? Such that you can try 1 stick at a time and see if it crashes?
2) Can you run memtest and see if any errors come back?

I only use one stick of memory sadly, but running a test on it sounds like a good idea, I'll do that!

Since my last update I've had 3... lol, make that 4 crashes (got one while actually in the middle of writing this!)... 3 of them again while using Firefox, and one of them while doing a quick load in Divinity: Original Sin. Sadly I don't remember if Firefox was open in the background while it happened, as I guess that would have been nice to know.

I'm gonna give another browser a try too and see if that helps. I really still can't understand why me getting a new graphics card makes me crash OUTSIDE of game a lot, but then again, I really don't understand computers as a whole, so I'm sure there's a semi-logical explanation 😛

So, next steps: Memory test and new browser! (one at a time)

 

[JeckeL]

My power supply is a "corsair vx550w".

I looked up zotac GTX 760's on newegg and found two: one has 4GB memory and the other is 2GB and OC'd, but both say recommended minimum PSU is 600w... how much memory is yours and did it come overclocked straight from the manufacturer? This seems to fit your situation perfectly too; the card is drawing too much power and causing random restarts

 

[Urt]

My power supply is a "corsair vx550w".

I looked up zotac GTX 760's on newegg and found two: one has 4GB memory and the other is 2GB and OC'd, but both say recommended minimum PSU is 600w... how much memory is yours and did it come overclocked straight from the manufacturer? This seems to fit your situation perfectly too; the card is drawing too much power and causing random restarts

My card has 4GB of memory and as far as I know it's not overclocked. Does it make sense that the power supply is to blame when there's such a clear pattern to the crashes though? At the time of this writing I've had 20 crashes since I started writing them down, and every single one has either been while I was browsing or while I was on a load-screen in Divinity: Original Sin. Not a single one has occurred while in other games (though, to be fair, 90% of my game-time has probably been spendt in Divinity) or while watching movies. Me not being a hardware-expert though, I don't know if browsing or loading screens in a game is somehow is more strenuous on the power supply than simply gaming normally or watching a movie?

I just noticed a new driver has come out from Nvidia btw, so if I'm (really, REALLY) lucky that could sort the problem... And no, it did not, got yet another crash while writing this post. That's starting to become a bit of a bad habbit. At least Firefox managed to save what I'd written, so it wasn't too bad 😉

 

[Jay Lavistria]

Is it receiving enough power?

 

[JeckeL]

Check event viewer under Windows Logs > System, if there are Event 41 - Kernel Power "The system rebooted without cleanly shutting down, etc, etc" then I would bet money it's PSU-related

 

[Urt]

Check event viewer under Windows Logs > System, if there are Event 41 - Kernel Power "The system rebooted without cleanly shutting down, etc, etc" then I would bet money it's PSU-related

I think we might have hit the jackpot here! When looking at my Event Viewer (a feature in Windows I didn't even know existed, so thank you for showing me that ) I can see that I've had 15 critical errors during the last 7 days, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM an Event 41 - Kernel Power.

Is it possible to get a new PSU separatly or will I have to get a new motherboard or something along with it so it all fits?

 

[JeckeL]

Is it possible to get a new PSU separatly or will I have to get a new motherboard or something along with it so it all fits?

You can just replace the PSU... I would recommend something like (depending on budget):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151137&cm_re=Seasonic_650-_-17-151-137-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171089&cm_re=cooler_master_750w-_-17-171-089-_-Product

The only thing you've gotta make sure of is what all kinds of connectors you need. Look through your system and check what all your PSU is connected to, you've probably got:

A large 24 pin connected to motheboard
Either a 4 or 8 pin connected to motherboard
6 pin connected to video card
Sata (or possibly molex) connected to HDD, dvd/cd drives, etc
(either of the above recommendations will suffice if this is the case)

If the above recommendations are too pricey take a look at this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1804779/power-supply-unit-tier-list.html

PSU's organized into "tiers" (aka ranked by quality/reliability). I probably wouldn't go below a 650w/620w

 

[Urt]

You can just replace the PSU... I would recommend something like (depending on budget):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151137&cm_re=Seasonic_650-_-17-151-137-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171089&cm_re=cooler_master_750w-_-17-171-089-_-Product

The only thing you've gotta make sure of is what all kinds of connectors you need. Look through your system and check what all your PSU is connected to, you've probably got:

A large 24 pin connected to motheboard
Either a 4 or 8 pin connected to motherboard
6 pin connected to video card
Sata (or possibly molex) connected to HDD, dvd/cd drives, etc
(either of the above recommendations will suffice if this is the case)

If the above recommendations are too pricey take a look at this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1804779/power-supply-unit-tier-list.html

PSU's organized into "tiers" (aka ranked by quality/reliability). I probably wouldn't go below a 650w/620w

Looked up the specs on my current PSU to see what connectors it has --> http://techwiki.hardwarecanucks.com/product/2MDQwOA/Corsair-VX550W/#spec

After comparing the list of PSUs I got at a local danish site similar to Newegg I found 3 possible new PSUs which where all on the Tier Two Class A-list but at a reasonable price.

The OCZ ZT Series OCZ-ZT650W, the XFX Core Edition PRO650W and the NZXT HALE82.

From what I can see they all have the same connectors as my old one (or more), only difference is that my old one had 6 SATA connectors where all 3 PSUs that I found had ATA connectors instead from what I could read. Will that be ok or will that make my computer blow up or something?