Question Computer Restarts When Idle

[WinterChill03]

Hey guys. I've been running into an issue lately with my computer where it randomly restarts. It seems to restart specifically when idle, but there doesn't seem to really be a set amount of time to make it happen. Last night, it stayed on from around 10PM to 2AM, but today, it was idle for maybe 15 minutes before it restarted.


I've been trying really hard to troubleshoot the problems. My first searches said it could be a power supply problem, so I replaced my power supply with a brand new one. I also just got a brand new hard drive and have a fresh install of Windows 10. I have made sure that all of my drivers are up to date. I've fiddled with the power options (both high performance and balanced, with sleep enabled and disabled). I have the automatic restart disabled for system failures, and there is never a blue screen with an error code when it happens. Event viewer has yielded pretty minimal information. All it says is that the system was not properly shutdown. Sometimes, there are attempts to update windows after the system shuts down improperly. So maybe Windows Update is trying to do something, but I don't know how to go about disabling it or fixing whatever it is doing.

Any suggestions would be so helpful.

 

[SchizTech]

You say there are no blue screens before the restart. Can you verify whether these happen like a Windows shutdown as opposed to just snapping off and restarting? If so that doesn't sound like an Update issue, rather like some other hardware fault. How is the electrical service where you live and for how long has this been happening? If you live in a region that gets hot in summer and where air conditioning is common brownouts can be common.

 

[mdd1963]

You might also (with power removed from PSU when removing/reinstalling RAM modules) drop down to one stick of RAM in required slot, and test for stability, or, download/run Memtest86 from a USB flash drive overnight....(or one stick at a time)

If you are using a discrete GPU and can run off of integrated graphics from your CPU, do so. (Eliminates your discrete GPU causing brownouts/reboots)

Once you've eliminated PSU, heat/thermal issues, bad RAM, intermittent shorts (pull unneeded SATA drive/disconnect cables associated with them, remove/disconnect USB headers from mainboard), you are usually left with only the mainboard remaining...

 

[WinterChill03]

You say there are no blue screens before the restart. Can you verify whether these happen like a Windows shutdown as opposed to just snapping off and restarting? If so that doesn't sound like an Update issue, rather like some other hardware fault. How is the electrical service where you live and for how long has this been happening? If you live in a region that gets hot in summer and where air conditioning is common brownouts can be common.

This has been happening for about a week or so. The air conditioning has been on in my house, but it was on for about a month and a half before this issue started showing up. It doesn't act like a traditional Windows restart. It just shuts off and then reboots.

 

[SchizTech]

OK. How about thermals? Have you checked temperatures reported in the BIOS or through a program like HWmonitor or CoreTemp? If there's dust inside clear it out and also check that the CPU heatsink is fully secure.

 

[WinterChill03]

OK. How about thermals? Have you checked temperatures reported in the BIOS or through a program like HWmonitor or CoreTemp? If there's dust inside clear it out and also check that the CPU heatsink is fully secure.

Sensors

|
+- Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 (/mainboard)
| |
| +- ITE IT8620E (/lpc/it8620e)
| | +- Voltage #1 : 1.164 0.804 1.2 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/0)
| | +- Voltage #2 : 2.016 2.016 2.016 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/1)
| | +- Voltage #3 : 2.016 2.016 2.016 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/2)
| | +- Voltage #4 : 1.992 1.992 1.992 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/3)
| | +- Voltage #5 : 0.012 0.012 0.012 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/4)
| | +- Voltage #6 : 1.764 1.74 1.776 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/5)
| | +- Voltage #7 : 1.536 1.536 1.536 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/6)
| | +- Standby +3.3V : 3.384 3.384 3.384 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/7)
| | +- VBat : 3.072 3.072 3.072 (/lpc/it8620e/voltage/8)
| | +- Temperature #1 : 38 37 38 (/lpc/it8620e/temperature/0)
| | +- Temperature #2 : 47 47 47 (/lpc/it8620e/temperature/1)
| | +- Temperature #3 : 34 30 42 (/lpc/it8620e/temperature/2)
| | +- Fan #1 : 885.827 813.253 1190.48 (/lpc/it8620e/fan/0)
| | +- Fan #3 : 634.399 633.803 635.593 (/lpc/it8620e/fan/2)
| | +- Fan #5 : 811.298 806.452 814.234 (/lpc/it8620e/fan/4)
| | +- Fan Control #1 : (/lpc/it8620e/control/0)
| | +- Fan Control #2 : (/lpc/it8620e/control/1)
| | +- Fan Control #3 : (/lpc/it8620e/control/2)
|
+- Intel Core i7-4790K (/intelcpu/0)
| +- Bus Speed : 99.9999 99.9998 100.004 (/intelcpu/0/clock/0)
| +- CPU Core #1 : 4400 3300 4400.18 (/intelcpu/0/clock/1)
| +- CPU Core #2 : 4400 3300 4400.18 (/intelcpu/0/clock/2)
| +- CPU Core #3 : 4400 3500 4400.18 (/intelcpu/0/clock/3)
| +- CPU Core #4 : 4400 3500 4400.18 (/intelcpu/0/clock/4)
| +- CPU Core #1 : 45 33 49 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/0)
| +- CPU Core #2 : 42 36 48 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/1)
| +- CPU Core #3 : 36 34 48 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/2)
| +- CPU Core #4 : 39 34 52 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/3)
| +- CPU Package : 45 37 52 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/4)
| +- CPU Total : 10.1292 3.51572 31.6964 (/intelcpu/0/load/0)
| +- CPU Core #1 : 12.5 3.1374 50 (/intelcpu/0/load/1)
| +- CPU Core #2 : 11.6346 1.5625 25 (/intelcpu/0/load/2)
| +- CPU Core #3 : 10.1563 0 25 (/intelcpu/0/load/3)
| +- CPU Core #4 : 6.22596 0.793648 56.6667 (/intelcpu/0/load/4)
| +- CPU Package : 31.2284 23.091 51.7793 (/intelcpu/0/power/0)
| +- CPU Cores : 22.6036 13.9046 43.5845 (/intelcpu/0/power/1)
| +- CPU Graphics : 0.00305162 0 0.00353102 (/intelcpu/0/power/2)
| +- CPU DRAM : 2.48768 2.19926 2.74017 (/intelcpu/0/power/3)
|
+- Generic Memory (/ram)
| +- Memory : 27.7868 27.7772 28.0445 (/ram/load/0)
| +- Used Memory : 4.40163 4.40011 4.44245 (/ram/data/0)
| +- Available Memory : 11.4391 11.3983 11.4406 (/ram/data/1)
|
+- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (/nvidiagpu/0)
| +- GPU Core : 1594.5 1594.5 1594.5 (/nvidiagpu/0/clock/0)
| +- GPU Memory : 4006.8 4006.8 4006.8 (/nvidiagpu/0/clock/1)
| +- GPU Shader : 3189 3189 3189 (/nvidiagpu/0/clock/2)
| +- GPU Core : 53 52 53 (/nvidiagpu/0/temperature/0)
| +- GPU Core : 1 0 7 (/nvidiagpu/0/load/0)
| +- GPU Memory Controller : 1 1 2 (/nvidiagpu/0/load/1)
| +- GPU Video Engine : 0 0 0 (/nvidiagpu/0/load/2)
| +- GPU Memory : 6.39625 6.0061 6.54807 (/nvidiagpu/0/load/3)
| +- GPU : 281 280 297 (/nvidiagpu/0/fan/0)
| +- GPU Fan : 8 8 8 (/nvidiagpu/0/control/0)
| +- GPU Memory Free : 7668.02 7655.58 7699.98 (/nvidiagpu/0/smalldata/1)
| +- GPU Memory Used : 523.981 492.02 536.418 (/nvidiagpu/0/smalldata/2)
| +- GPU Memory Total : 8192 8192 8192 (/nvidiagpu/0/smalldata/3)
|
+- ST1000DX002-2DV162 (/hdd/0)
| +- Temperature : 33 33 33 (/hdd/0/temperature/0)
| +- Used Space : 31.7573 31.7565 31.7573 (/hdd/0/load/0)

These are the temperatures right now.

 

[SchizTech]

It's hard to tell too much from a snapshot in time like that but the temps shown are perfectly safe (the chip can get to around 90C before the system shuts down to protect itself). It's worthwhile to physically check that the heastink is secure but this snapshot shows nothing abnormal. At this point we can move on to RAM, as the other poster indicated. Running tests with memtest86 can be a bit time consuming; each pass might take a few hours depending on the capacity of RAM installed and the test just loops around and starts another pass after completing one in succession until manually stopped by the user. Generally it's advised to let it run a couple of passes (if no errors appear it's considered to pass the test). This can be done with each stick individually to rule out a single bad stick. It's also possible when combining RAM that incompatibilities can occur.

On that note, what are your specs? Is this a hand-built system or a store-bought system? If you change the RAM configuration in the course of testing it do make sure the power is disconnected when removing or installing memory.

 

[WinterChill03]

This is a hand-built system. I've been replacing parts as I get new ones for the last few years. I just opened it up and put the RAM into the other two slots just to be sure. I'll run the memory test overnight and see what comes back. Thank you for all of your suggestions, by the way.

My specs are:

Intel i7 4790k
GTX 1070
16GB RAM
750W EVGA Power Supply
1TB Seagate FireCuda