Mystery reboots from upgrade to GTX 760

[mutagen]

I've upgraded my video card and I'm experiencing random rebooting while at the Windows desktop, only when the computer is in use, but never in games.

System: i7 730 in a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R. Old video card was a 5770, new card is a Gigabyte GTX 760. Windows 8.1, fully up to date. No overclocking. System was relatively stable, a couple of times a month it would hang with mouse movement but no response to keyboard, mouse or even power button, little disk activity. Current problem is different, a straight up reboot with no BSOD or minidump written to disk and nothing in the Windows log except for the 'unexpected shutdown' when it comes back up.

What I've tried:

• 
  Checked temperatures, all OK.
  Memory test. No issues found.
  "Stress test" - Prime95, Furmark. These drive temps up but won't trigger a reboot.
  Driver cleaning, AMD drivers and a few rounds of NVIDIA cleaning and reinstall.
  Driver versions: current WHQL drivers and the original version that came with the card.
  BIOS update. There was was an update that addressed PCI-E issues but didn't make a bit of difference for me.
  Checked power supply ratings, have ~10A headroom on 12V rails. Hasn't rebooted under load (stresstest, games), only when using the desktop (web browsing, explorer, etc).
  Safe mode, no problems.
  Reinstalled old card, no issues for a few hours.
  Swapped card to PCI-E x16 slot number 2. This improved things considerably but I've had two spontaneous reboots in 12-15 hours of use (up from an average of every 30 minutes or so).
  Gaming. I've put in plenty of time on Diablo, WoW, Planetary Annihilation, Starcraft, etc without an issue. Fans come on, card heats up, no problems. Tab out to desktop and I occasionally trigger a reboot.
  Ran sfc.exe (system file checker), no issues found.

My suspects:

• 
  Bad card. I'll probably try replacing it as a next step.
  Bad motherboard.
  Windows issue. This only happens when I'm actively using Windows. I left it running overnight after several reboots within minutes of logging in and the computer ran fine all night but started up again while I was doing my morning web browsing over coffee. I'm thinking of creating a new user and seeing if a fresh profile helps any. I've got an extra drive I could test a fresh install with as well.
  Power supply. This is low on my list because I don't have issues while under load but I'm not willing to rule it out.

Any ideas? Anything I'm missing? I'm kind of wondering if there's some subtle plug and play issue at work here, having a bit more success with the card in the second PCI-E slot slightly reinforces that (but could so point at motherboard issues, etc).

Clearly the solution is to only play games on the computer!

 

[HiTechObsessed]

Is Windows fully up to date? And have you tried the Repair Windows option?

 

[nuts32605]

You might be triggering a current spike. When you're on the desktop the graphics card will roll back on the speed and "idle" basically. But if the call comes in for graphics the card might drop the hammer and in a fraction of a second go to 100% power. This causes a huge in-rush of current to the card, which can cause the PSU to "cough" in a sense. Try plugging a bunch of stuff into your USB ports and opening/quitting a game. Either the PSU will choke or your problem maybe somewhere else.

 

[ezskills]

Try doing a clean windows intall

 

[mutagen]

Thanks for the suggestions!

Windows is fully up to date. I haven't tried the Windows repair option. I have run sfc.exe (system file checker) with no issues found. I'll edit that into my original response for completeness. I'd hate to have to re-install Windows because I'm lazy but I hate lockups more. Hard to go wrong blaming Windows (or any OS, for that matter).

The current spike / power supply suggestion is intriguing. I do have 3 spinning rust drives in addition to the SSD, I could maybe see one of them powering down and then getting spun back up to create a power spike. Some of the rebooting happens fairly quickly after starting up though. I did do some simultaneous USB plugging and was unable to trigger a reboot.

 

[nuts32605]

Try cleaning out all the old drivers and reinstalling the new drivers.
Use this to remove your AMD drivers: http://www2.ati.com/drivers/amdcleanuputility.exe
Then go through and uninstall all the nvidia stuff.
Finally reboot the machine. It'll fall back to a generic driver and look pretty ugly.
Install the latest nVidia drivers.

 

[mutagen]

New power supply solved it. While I wasn't able to trigger it by plugging stuff in, I was able to turn on C3/C6/C7 in the BIOS and get many more spontaneous reboots. So while games weren't the big power draw, Windows changing power state pushed things over the edge.