My gaming PC shuts down because of Resident Evil. Please help

[nVidea]

This morning, my gf played resident evil 6. After a few minutes of starting the game, the entire PC shut down. Power supply is shut down, the entire system is down.

I opened it again, and played the Resident evil 6 again, and the PC shuts down again.

I opened the pc again and played Black Ops 1 highest graphics settings, my gf played it and the pc never shut down.

What I'm confused about is that I played Res.Evil 6 a few days ago and I played for 5 minutes before quitting the game (I never liked the game anyway)...

Anyway, I thought the rig is not yet hot enough to produce enough power, so I let my gf play and finish 1 chapter of Black Ops 1 and I told her to play Res Evil 6. After she open that game, my pc shuts down again -.-

must be something wrong with the settings because i kinda changed the video settings, Does it have something to do with the video settings of the game?

My rig specs:

Athlon II x3 450
Asus m5a78m LX
R9 270x Toxic 2gb OC
SEASONIC 620W
Kingston 4GB 1330

What do you think is the problem?

EDIT:

1. That's it this happen again.

I was playing Blacksite Area 51, 720p high settings, no AA. After 5 minutes of gaming, my PC shuts down. But before that, my girlfriend played black ops from middle chapter right up to the end straight. No problem. But when I played Blacksite, just after her, It shut down.


What are the possible solutions?
How can I lock the 4th core of my CPU so that it would be more stable? Does anybody even knows how to safely lock the 4th core?

2. I tried playing Resident Evil 6 again, to lowest graphics settings, but set to 60 FPS. The game managed to survive for a few more minutes of gameplay until my PC shut down.

EDIT

Here's my interior rig: http://imgur.com/gallery/gLKiq/new pls comment if it doesn't work,.

 

[helpstar]

before buying a antique H81 board, B85 would be the first choice for the same price
the H97 is not that much more expensive than the budget boards

 

[Warren_Taylor]

You need an exorcist.

 

[madmatt30]

^ or these guys

 

[Guest]

your cooler looks very dusty, clean it and reapply thermal paste ARCTIC MX-2
your CPU shouldn´t go over 60°C

i3 4160 is a dual core cpu, consider the i5 4460

I was going to suggest the i5 4690K, which is better than both, but costs about $50 more than the i5 4460 and $120 more than i3 4160. If I didn't have the money for the i5 4690K I would definitely go for the i5 4460 over any of the i3 processors. The i3s are designed more toward folks who do casual gaming but mostly use their computers for other things. Serious gamers go for the i5 4690K and up into the i7s. The rest of us fit into the range of other i5 processors - buyers wanting something good for gaming but can't afford more, but handle games very well with their solid 4 cores.

And, of course, graphic cards make the biggest difference but never put a high end (or upper mid range) one with a very low end cpu (dual or single cores) - one will find out in a hurry that a cpu can make a big difference, too.

And if the original poster can pay that little bit more for the i5 4460 or the even i5 4690K, he should do it. Buying a cpu is not like paying a cell phone every month - you pay one time ONLY and it has to last for a while.

 

[nVidea]

Thanks for your replies. I am after the "looks" (I can save up money) so I'd like the MSI one, but there's also ASUS H97 Pro Gamer.

I don't understand the Crossfire/SLI availability on these chipsets: H97 and B85. According to here: http://www.asus.com/ph/Motherboards/VANGUARD_B85/ Asus B85 support Crossfire, it's cheaper also. But can the MSI H97 support Crossfire (it's more expensive)? Also I've found out that Asus B85 Vanguard needs 8-pin power supply? Wew. Does it really need that large power supply when it's smaller than other motherboards?

Hm, I'm a working gamer, the reason I chose I3 over i5 is because I only play like 2 days a week. and I believe the difference is only small when it comes to gaming. Single-thread is slitghtly better on i3 than i5 (they said), but i5 wins over-all. I would upgrade to i7 when I have the saved up money, or after 1 year.


Please help me on motherboards, I need:

1. Looks (that's on no.1 spot, i want to show my rig to my friends. I want cool-looking motherboard. considering Asus H97 Pro Gamer)
2. build quality
3. No cpu overclock needed
4. Crossfire system in case I buy 2nd R9 270x Toxic.
5. At least 1 USB3.0
6. LGA 1150

 

[nVidea]

I want thos one: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8272/Maximus%20VII%20Formula_box.png

But... the protection is sold separately? That protection, which Asus motherboards does it support?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your replies. I am after the "looks" (I can save up money) so I'd like the MSI one, but there's also ASUS H97 Pro Gamer.

I don't understand the Crossfire/SLI availability on these chipsets: H97 and B85. According to here: http://www.asus.com/ph/Motherboards/VANGUARD_B85/ Asus B85 support Crossfire, it's cheaper also. But can the MSI H97 support Crossfire (it's more expensive)? Also I've found out that Asus B85 Vanguard needs 8-pin power supply? Wew. Does it really need that large power supply when it's smaller than other motherboards?

Hm, I'm a working gamer, the reason I chose I3 over i5 is because I only play like 2 days a week. and I believe the difference is only small when it comes to gaming. Single-thread is slitghtly better on i3 than i5 (they said), but i5 wins over-all. I would upgrade to i7 when I have the saved up money, or after 1 year.


Please help me on motherboards, I need:

1. Looks (that's on no.1 spot, i want to show my rig to my friends. I want cool-looking motherboard. considering Asus H97 Pro Gamer)
2. build quality
3. No cpu overclock needed
4. Crossfire system in case I buy 2nd R9 270x Toxic.
5. At least 1 USB3.0
6. LGA 1150

Depends on the specific motherboard. B85 motherboards are cheaper and I'm sure what the differences are from the H97 boards. Perhaps the Intel B85 chipset is a different chipset on the H97 boards?

Having said that, the most often used motherboards for i3/i5/i7 processors are the H97 and Z97 series. (Not talking about the current high end i7s, of course, that use the X99 boards).

The ability to do Crossfire varies with each motherboard - some offer it and some don't. So you have to check that it will do what you want. The biggest difference between the H and Z motherboards is that the Z boards offer overclocking, and very often offer both SLI (2 NVidia graphic cards) and Crossfire (2 AMD graphic cards) support.

I see you say that you are not into overclocking at all. You still might want to consider a Z97 motherboard. Many will overclock your cpu for you via their included software, and do it easily and safely. Almost all ASUS motherboards make it extremely easy, as do others. Two, you have a larger choice of Z boards that will support both SLI and Crossfire - more than with the H series.

Here's an MSI H97 board that will do both Crossfire and SLI:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130801

Here's an ASUS Z97 board that does both Crossfire/SLI and can be overclocked very easily:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132118

Here's an ASRock H97 board that will do Crossfire:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157510

You may or may not like the color schemes of the top two, but the ASRock is similar to the MSI H97 you where considering. Go to www.Newegg.com to look at more motherboards so you can find one that fits your specific needs and looks the way you want it to.

Personally, I would go with a Z97 board but either choice you make here, an H97 or Z97, will be much better than what you have now.

PS: I should have mentioned this earlier about the Z97 motherboards. To take advantage of the overclocking feature on these motherboards one would want to purchase a processor that ends with a "K." That means it is designed to be overclocked - processors such as the i5 4670K, 4690K and the i7 4790K.

 

[Guest]

I want thos one: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8272/Maximus%20VII%20Formula_box.png

But... the protection is sold separately? That protection, which Asus motherboards does it support?

No. That comes on the motherboard already. However, that Z97 board is expensive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132247

In case you missed this addition to my last comment, I put it here, too:

PS: I should have mentioned this earlier about the Z97 motherboards. To take advantage of the overclocking feature on these motherboards one would want to purchase a processor that ends with a "K." That means it is designed to be overclocked - processors such as the i5 4670K, 4690K and the i7 4790K.

 

[helpstar]

"Z" in front of th chipset is just for overclockers, then you should buy a "K" CPU to be able to overclock seriously. non "k" CPUs have a locked multiplier

H97 vs. B85
B85: bit cheaper, bit less connection possibilities
http://ark.intel.com/products/75019
http://ark.intel.com/products/82010/Intel-DH82H97-PCH

"Also I've found out that Asus B85 Vanguard needs 8-pin power supply? Wew. Does it really need that large power supply when it's smaller than other motherboards?"
Would always get a motherboard with 8pins and not 4pins, because of more stable overall system power.
It probably wouldn´t need it because of power consumption, but in this case, more is better and stands a bit for modern quality motherboards.

Does your PSU support a 8pin ATX12V connector?

"Hm, I'm a working gamer, the reason I chose I3 over i5 is because I only play like 2 days a week. and I believe the difference is only small when it comes to gaming."
This depends on which games you are playing, some games will be bottlnecked by the i3.
For gaming more and more games provide more than 2 core support

"Single-thread is slitghtly better on i3 than i5 (they said), but i5 wins over-all."
depends on the frequency of the CPUs, the Intel Core i5-4590 is single threaded a bit better than the i3 4160, because of its turbo core of 3.7GHz


"I would upgrade to i7 when I have the saved up money, or after 1 year."
That´s overkill if you don´t upgrade your graphics card at the same time and even then an i7 is overkill. An I5 can handle two 290x.
Intel Xeon (i7 without integrated graphics chip) would be the 1st choice if you really want to get a serious high end gaming system without overclocking.
Even a second 270x would bottlneck a xeon/I7

 

[Rhettjd]

Read what the first guy suggested, did you over clock your CPU yes or no?
Vram is Video ram hes talking about the extra cache of ram all cpus come with.
Cpu gets to hot it shuts down your machine because its to hot to run, if you did over clock your Cpu i would set it back to the standards.

You dont seem to have the expertise on system building. Over clocking if done wrong will in time burn up components.

If you turned on the other core and it crashes the system sounds like your getting instability with that core being turned on. Your current air flow in your machine is not enough so the cpu is getting close to over heating and shuts itself off.

Every game is different with its demands on a computer, if your settings are high turn them to a lower setting and try again.
And your Pc is a jumbled mess needs some serious clean up.
Your radeon video cards run hot as it is you need more air flow in this machine.

What's VRM?? VRAM? Isn't it the RAM on the Video card? I unlocked the 4th core, OOOOHH yeah, When I played the Res.Evil 6 last week, i only had 3 core, it plays well. But this week, or 2 days ago, I unlocked the 4th core. This morning we played the Res.Evil 6, and it always shut down since then.

How to lock the 4th core? Because the only way I know is to have a power black out, which will cause the motherboard to reset its settings, which will lock the 4th core again.

Oh well, I was planning to buy MSI H97 Gaming 3 and Intel Core i3 4160 after two months, you think my pc won't shut down like it does now? Intel has better temperature resistance.

Yeah I also noticed that the R9 270x Toxic heats faster than normal when playing ResEvil 6(compared to playing black ops 1).

So your only option for me is to have better cpu cooler?

I don't get this:

"CPU thermal protection might also be set too low (60C?) so the shutdown might be initiated by the mobo CPU sensor not the vrm one - in this case you just need to raise the value to 70C (no more)"

CPU thermal protection can manually be controlled? i don't know how to control it manually. And how to " raise the value to 70C (no more)" I don't know it.

 

[itsallpoo]

I've always found that, sometimes, the solution is a simple thing but of course that isn't always so true. On a three year old motherboard I'd replace the cmos battery they are a couple bucks at walgreens or if you have a dollar store or a big lots you can probably get them a lot cheaper there for several batteries. You may laugh at the concept of a problem caused by a cmos battery but I've seen it happen on my own and friend's systems, replace the battery as it's most likely dead. Clearing the cmos by motherboard jumper is also good but don't only jumper it also disconnect the power cord and let it sit ten minutes or more to be sure it's all wiped outl. On my current high end gigabyte board I had to shut off amd cool n quiet or I'd have random restarts for no discernable reason. Do you have another or can you borrow a different video card to see if it does the same thing? What version of bios do you have on the board, if it's old then update it (backup the current version of course). On my last build I had to replace my wonderful old case because it quite simply didn't have enough fan slots or proper ventilation, newer hardware is getting to the point that liquid cooling is just a necessity at least for the cpu and there are even liquid kits coming out for high end video cards. Your power supply may be fine but perhaps too small for all the stuff running in your case and modern video cards are a bit hungry. Take the side off the case and setup a small fan to blow inside, if the problem goes away you know it's heat related but since you have other equally hardware stressing games I simply cannot buy the heat solution. If your motherboard has a speaker or you have one connected all the motherboards I've built lately give a beeping noise to tell you that you've exceeded set temperature before they shut down your system. This kind of problem will make your hair fall out, it's probably time to update anyway my last machine I stretched for five years and it was getting to be a real snail especially on the newer games.

 

[NealN]

Check your 24 pin power cable to the motherboard to see if it is properly seated. That happened to me. My computer was shutting down and my ASUS board was telling me that there was a power surge. It got worse over time from rarely to frequently.

 

[helpstar]

sorry, but I couldn´t stand aside and have to write something, of course all of you wanna help and have read the whole thread:

@ Rhettjd
like earlier described, VRM= voltage regulator modules, which are mounted on the motherboard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage_regulator_module

@ itsallpoo
620W are more than sufficient for this rig, BIOS battery would cause problems only at boot up/post, not while running windows, cmos jumper was used correctly the second time, graphics card runs fine with 3 cores of CPU, please use paragraphs 😉

Little summary:
The main problem is the 4th core of the CPU. With 3 cores = all fine

The cause is an overheating problem with the 4th core enabled and/or VRM problem (power phase desgin of motherboard).

 

[helpstar]

@NealN
if this would be the problem, don´t you think his ASUS board would tell him like yours did?