Computer restart looping

[Dronez]

Hello, i've owned my computer now for i'd say almost 5 years, shes one of a kind, helped me through thick and thin and i love her, until she does something wrong. For the past 2 years i'd say, my computer has had this weird urge to need to restart loop itself with no warning, one day i'll be doing something whether it be playing games or browsing the internet, it will one day just decide with no warning or error to restart, usually letting me back in for about 2 minutes, then restarting, then eventually getting stuck in a loop when i can't even into the BIOS. This has happened 4 times in the past 5 years, but 4 times in clutters. It will last a month doing it, then one day out of the blue it'll work normally for another 8 months. I've taken it to my PC shop and they stress tested it for 24 hours with no restarts, i eventually though it was my house's power sockets, i moved houses (not because of my computer) and it worked perfectly again, until about 3 months into my new house it did it again, then like i said stopped until now. I've changed power cords, surge adapters, ran memtest, safe booted, reformatted, virus scanned, i really don't know what to do. It happens in and out of games, of course i thought it was CPU heat yet at an idle 40c (aussie weather) it does it aswell. My fans work fine, re-did thermal paste on cpu, i tightened my heatsink back up just incase it wasn't properly touching, i've cleaned it with an air compressor. I checked eventviewer before it restart looped and it was ID 41, however, if it was a failing PSU, how could i of gone 8 months fine, just to start again? Seems a bit weird. Same with dieing parts. I do not overclock, i do not touch bios settings like voltage and such and never have. Here are my specs

Intel i5-2500k
16gb HyperX ram (not sure of the speed)
GTX 570

Any help would be amazing, over the years i would of checked hundreds of threads just like mine yet never seem to be the fix for my computer. Thanks in advance.

 

[MundoDragon]

My first suspect would be PSU. Keep in mind, just because it runs for a while, doesn't mean much. Unstable is unstable. The fact that it is 5 years old doesn't help either. That would firmly be in my sights. Either flat out replace it, or try to pilfer one from someone for a while and see if the issue occurs. One thing you could try is resetting your BIOS on the motherboard. Usually there is a jumper, but sometimes you have to pop out the battery for a bit to reset it. Check your motherboard documentation for it's easiest method. But still, I'm aiming more towards PSU. Good luck.

 

[Dronez]

My first suspect would be PSU. Keep in mind, just because it runs for a while, doesn't mean much. Unstable is unstable. The fact that it is 5 years old doesn't help either. That would firmly be in my sights. Either flat out replace it, or try to pilfer one from someone for a while and see if the issue occurs. One thing you could try is resetting your BIOS on the motherboard. Usually there is a jumper, but sometimes you have to pop out the battery for a bit to reset it. Check your motherboard documentation for it's easiest method. But still, I'm aiming more towards PSU. Good luck.

Thanks for your reply, yes i'm definitely replacing it, but it needs to last atleast 3 more months!! Grr!! lol. I'll try looking up the bios reset and if that doesn't work i'll check if any friends have a psu, if the psu is under the recommended watts for the 570 would i be able to take out the gpu and still have a normal boot to determine if its the psu?

 

[MundoDragon]

That depends on the state of the PSU. A lot of times they will give warning signs before going completely (i.e. random, erratic restarts) You could try, but I wouldn't bet the bank on the results. Hope you get it sorted out.

EDIT: This is, of course, assuming you have onboard graphics to take the GPU's place.

 

[Dronez]

I tried PSU, also restarted, reformatted my hard drive aswell, while installing an anti virus it restarted.

 

[MundoDragon]

Not sure what you mean by 'tried PSU'. Does that mean you replaced it? Also, have you tried resetting the BIOS, unless that is what you mean by 'restarted'? If you have ruled out the PSU and reset the BIOS, I would try the one-stick memory method. Remove all memory but one stick and run for a while to see if it happens. Then replace that stick with one of the others and run with it for a while. If it happens with one stick but doesn't happen with the other, you could have a bad memory stick. I say 'could' because it all depends on how extensive and the duration of the tests. If possible, try putting the system under as much stress as possible with each stick in.