[SOLVED] Computer Rebooting Randomly

[DasWulve]

My PC has been rebooting instantaneously and randomly for the past week or so. There's absolutely zero notice, freezing, lagging, or using similar programs that could help me diagnose it. One moment I'm gaming/watching videos/web browsing/idle and a split second later all power is off, a half-second after that everything turns back on like a normal reboot. No blue screen or anything.

Things I've noticed:
I recentlyish (a few months ago) replaced my failing power supply from a CX750 to a Supernova G2. I know, why'd I even buy the CX750 in the first place? I doubt it's related, but its the most recent maintenance I've done on the hardware side.

Secondly, whenever there's a random reboot I hear two clicks: one as the computer turns off, and one as it turns on. I googled clicking and random reboots and came up with something called the click of death linked to hard drive failure. But those clicks seem to happen more than twice a reboot.

Ideas?

 

[ZenWolf]

Well, it sounds dangerously like something wrong with the power supply, but considering you said you recently replaced that, unless it got damaged (storm surge, etc) or was faulty from the start that wouldn't seem right. i mean if you have an old psu laying around you could swap that in and see if it fixes it. As for the hard drive thing, i've heard of it, but never experienced it myself, so i cant really give you any insight into that. My computer clicks like four times every time it boots, and i don't have any hard drive issues. If that helps lol

 

[Moribund]

I second that. The clicks you're describing are usually PSU relay. Even though your PSU is new it may still be faulty. Consider investing into a device like Dr. PSU, it's only $10-20 or swap for older PSU. SSDs do not click and if you're using an HDD, a dying hard drive typically doesn't cause random reboots, more often it,s BSOD, black screens or freezing. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to run chkdsk anyway. It would help if you listed your specs. Download Core Temp utility and look at your temperatures as well. Best to proceed through elimination. Swap PSU and if the aberrant behaviour continues, check hdd and temps. Best of luck

 

[DasWulve]

I second that. The clicks you're describing are usually PSU relay. Even though your PSU is new it may still be faulty. Consider investing into a device like Dr. PSU, it's only $10-20 or swap for older PSU. SSDs do not click and if you're using an HDD, a dying hard drive typically doesn't cause random reboots, more often it,s BSOD, black screens or freezing. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to run chkdsk anyway. It would help if you listed your specs. Download Core Temp utility and look at your temperatures as well. Best to proceed through elimination. Swap PSU and if the aberrant behaviour continues, check hdd and temps. Best of luck

CPU: i5 4690K stock clock
GPU: 980 TI
PSU: Supernova G2
HDD: WD2002FAEX (WD Black 2 TB)
MOBO: Z97 Gaming 5
RAM: G.skill Ripjaws DDR3 2x4 GB and some offbrand RAM a friend gave me (Mushkin i think)

I ran chkdsk before I posted this thread. It was going fine so I left my PC, when I came back CMD was closed. I assume that means no errors?

MSI Afterburner lists my GPU and CPU both at 45C idle.

I'll post back with stress test temps and I'll see if I can borrow a friend's PSU.

 

[Moribund]

For the future, you should run CMD as administrator by default. Now. Go to Control panel, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer, in Event Viewer expand Windows logs, select application log, right click on it and select "find", type wininit and click Find Next. Then in the middle pane click Source/wininit line it finds. You should see the complete log for latest CHKDSK. Here's the same for Windows 10 just follow instructions to see latest chkdsk log https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-find-chkdsk-results-in-windows-10/

Your temps are OK for GPU in idle, but a little high for CPU in idle. Download a program called Prime95 and run stress tests on your hardware. Read up a little bit online on how to use it. Maybe strat with a CPU stress test. https://www.mersenne.org/download/

Memtest is another idea, besides pulling out RAM running your PC with one RAM chip at a time.

 

[Moribund]

Just to clarify, idle temps may depend on your power consumption scheme. They are meaningless by themselves unless they're so ridiculously high as to point to some obvious mounting issue. More importantly to stress test and see if the temps are too high at load. But just as an example, I had that same CPU at around 35 C at idle using Windows "Balanced" power scheme. Here's how to create bootable Prime95 disk and stress test your CPU and RAM, as well test how your PSU handles maximum power consumption https://www.infopackets.com/news/10113/how-fix-bootable-prime95-stress-test-hardware

Last but not least. In my experience, couple of times random shutdowns/reboots which did not produce a Windows error log were caused by faulty case power/reset buttons. It is a rare problem, but when it happens it can totally stump even the best of us. ILast time this happened I was told that I was the 3rd or the 4th person to try and repair the PC. S
o. If you change the PSU but the problem persists, consider taking your mobo and all the peripherals out of the case, and running them as you normally would (use flathead screwdriver to quickly touch the 2 power switch leads on your board to boot your PC).