[SOLVED] Once per day freeze, black screen, and unexpected restart.

Dec 24, 2020
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TL;DR often my computer restarts unexpectedly (not exactly a BSOD, also never more than once in a day), with the screen freezing momentarily, followed by a very short lived return of the audio, and then a restart. Any advice or insight would be deeply appreciated, even more so if you'd be willing to read below.
I've been having a problem with my PC that's arisen over the past few months which is starting to drive me a bit nuts. I built it just over a year ago, but just recently I've been experiencing this new problem:
Usually once a day (but never more than once), my computer will freeze completely for about half a second, sound will resume for another second or two, and then my computer will just flat out restart. Sometimes the fans (presumably just on the GPU) ramp up for around six seconds, too.
I'm not super knowledgeable, but I've been trying my earnest to figure out what's wrong, and have gathered some very frustrating information on the way.
  1. I can never predict when it's going to happen. Originally I thought I noticed a pattern of it being on for a while, and then the first five to ten minutes of a game, the crash would happen, but a couple times I've had it after my computer's been on for hours, gone through multiple games (some of which pinned my various components) no problem, and then crashed.
  2. Event viewer is no help. I've timestamped the crashes exactly before, and all I get are Kernel-Power 41 errors, telling me that the system "rebooted without cleanly shutting down first", which really just tells me that something happened, and never any errors, only warnings (DistributedCOM warnings, which are apparently expected) that happened more than ten minutes prior.
  3. I don't often push my system to the limits, partially because it runs pretty damn hot when I do, but I've had recent days where I've had this problem, and yet been able to stress test my system with OCCT for an hour, or play games for several, and it never repeats on the same day.
  4. I've been using OCCT's monitoring feature to try and catch one of these crashes, but I can never get it to happen while OCCT is running, so repeatability is out the window for the moment, and nothing I've used has given me any actual info.
In light of all this, I still have no idea what the problem is. Due to point one, I've considered it might be a PSU problem, because it seems like the issue mostly occurs when my GPU's power usage spikes up to meet a serious load, however it's always delayed by at least a few minutes, so it's just a hunch. Due to point two, and the fact that it's never a proper BSOD with an error code, I'm figuring it has to be a hardware issue, because Windows never has time to log it. Point three might tell people other than me something, but considering that even though my system is hot, it can go right back to being so after the restart without being interrupted, I don't see any reason why thermals would be the case (for those wondering, 80-83C on my GPU and CPU when they're both maxed at the same time in OCCT, real high resulting from some razer thin clearance). Point four just highlights how incredibly frustrating this is. I feel like I'm left to speculation. I mentioned in the preface that, once in a blue moon, fans I assume to be the GPU's ramp up when this problem occurs, but I'm just too lost in the whole GPU shortage to even consider replacing it until I'm certain it's the problem. I'm really worried though, because it seems like whenever this happens, audio continues working for at least a few more seconds, so clearly data is still momentarily intact and being processed or something. I've gone and ordered another power supply, and I've heard that replacing the CMOS battery on my motherboard might help, but I'm real desperate for any advice on the information, theories, potential solutions, or even advice on if replacing the CMOS battery is worth it.

  • The GPU in question is an ASUS Strix 2080 Ti
  • The PSU in question is an EVGA SuperNova 850 G3
  • My CPU is an I9-9900KS
  • My motherboard is an Asus Mini-ITX Z390I motherboard
 
Solution
I have, actually, but unfortunately to no avail. The blackouts replacing the restarts might have happened at the same time I reset windows, but I couldn’t say for sure. I also just found out about and checked the SMART status of my hard drives, and both of them were fine, so I guess that’s another part knocked off the list. I’m going to check event viewer next time it happens, but until then I’m stumped.

maybe remove the graphic card first , and run your system with intel integrated graphic , see if this issue will happen again
if it dont happen again , this issue probably belongs to graphic card or the wires gpu connceted with psu or psu itself

if it happens again , at least you know the graphic card is innocent
TL;DR often my computer restarts unexpectedly (not exactly a BSOD, also never more than once in a day), with the screen freezing momentarily, followed by a very short lived return of the audio, and then a restart. Any advice or insight would be deeply appreciated, even more so if you'd be willing to read below.
I've been having a problem with my PC that's arisen over the past few months which is starting to drive me a bit nuts. I built it just over a year ago, but just recently I've been experiencing this new problem:
Usually once a day (but never more than once), my computer will freeze completely for about half a second, sound will resume for another second or two, and then my computer will just flat out restart. Sometimes the fans (presumably just on the GPU) ramp up for around six seconds, too.
I'm not super knowledgeable, but I've been trying my earnest to figure out what's wrong, and have gathered some very frustrating information on the way.
  1. I can never predict when it's going to happen. Originally I thought I noticed a pattern of it being on for a while, and then the first five to ten minutes of a game, the crash would happen, but a couple times I've had it after my computer's been on for hours, gone through multiple games (some of which pinned my various components) no problem, and then crashed.
  2. Event viewer is no help. I've timestamped the crashes exactly before, and all I get are Kernel-Power 41 errors, telling me that the system "rebooted without cleanly shutting down first", which really just tells me that something happened, and never any errors, only warnings (DistributedCOM warnings, which are apparently expected) that happened more than ten minutes prior.
  3. I don't often push my system to the limits, partially because it runs pretty damn hot when I do, but I've had recent days where I've had this problem, and yet been able to stress test my system with OCCT for an hour, or play games for several, and it never repeats on the same day.
  4. I've been using OCCT's monitoring feature to try and catch one of these crashes, but I can never get it to happen while OCCT is running, so repeatability is out the window for the moment, and nothing I've used has given me any actual info.
In light of all this, I still have no idea what the problem is. Due to point one, I've considered it might be a PSU problem, because it seems like the issue mostly occurs when my GPU's power usage spikes up to meet a serious load, however it's always delayed by at least a few minutes, so it's just a hunch. Due to point two, and the fact that it's never a proper BSOD with an error code, I'm figuring it has to be a hardware issue, because Windows never has time to log it. Point three might tell people other than me something, but considering that even though my system is hot, it can go right back to being so after the restart without being interrupted, I don't see any reason why thermals would be the case (for those wondering, 80-83C on my GPU and CPU when they're both maxed at the same time in OCCT, real high resulting from some razer thin clearance). Point four just highlights how incredibly frustrating this is. I feel like I'm left to speculation. I mentioned in the preface that, once in a blue moon, fans I assume to be the GPU's ramp up when this problem occurs, but I'm just too lost in the whole GPU shortage to even consider replacing it until I'm certain it's the problem. I'm really worried though, because it seems like whenever this happens, audio continues working for at least a few more seconds, so clearly data is still momentarily intact and being processed or something. I've gone and ordered another power supply, and I've heard that replacing the CMOS battery on my motherboard might help, but I'm real desperate for any advice on the information, theories, potential solutions, or even advice on if replacing the CMOS battery is worth it.

  • The GPU in question is an ASUS Strix 2080 Ti
  • The PSU in question is an EVGA SuperNova 850 G3
  • My CPU is an I9-9900KS
  • My motherboard is an Asus Mini-ITX Z390I motherboard
Is your bios fully up to date
 
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Dec 24, 2020
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Sorry no internet part few days. Try using pc without gpu for a little
I'm back after a short hiatus. I put a new power supply in my computer, and it fixed the problem for about a week, but now it's back to doing the same thing, so I'm beyond confused at this point. I'll give the no graphics card suggestion a try for a few days, but do you have any other suggestions if that falls through?
 
I'm back after a short hiatus. I put a new power supply in my computer, and it fixed the problem for about a week, but now it's back to doing the same thing, so I'm beyond confused at this point. I'll give the no graphics card suggestion a try for a few days, but do you have any other suggestions if that falls through?
If it's not a graphics card issue the problem would normally lie within the script. If it's windows or drivers it would normally be something there
 
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Dec 24, 2020
6
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10
If it's not a graphics card issue the problem would normally lie within the script. If it's windows or drivers it would normally be something there
Well, more news about whatever this problem is. I'm slowly Ship-of-Theseus-ing this computer, and at this point the only thing that's the same is my motherboard, CPU, and my M.2 hard drives. None of what I've done has fixed the problem, but it does seem to have changed form: Now, instead of restarting fully, my screens go black for about 10 seconds, then audio and video output cut out for 10-20, and then everything comes back. I'm well confused at this point, especially because other than that, all I've done is disable XMP, because I thought it might have been caused by an unstable memory overclock. The graphics card definitely wasn't the problem, nor was the RAM or PSU. Any other ideas?
 
Dec 24, 2020
6
0
10
ever tried reinstall windows system ? feel like it was not 100 percent certained a hardware problem , still possibly a messed up software problem
I have, actually, but unfortunately to no avail. The blackouts replacing the restarts might have happened at the same time I reset windows, but I couldn’t say for sure. I also just found out about and checked the SMART status of my hard drives, and both of them were fine, so I guess that’s another part knocked off the list. I’m going to check event viewer next time it happens, but until then I’m stumped.
 
Jan 13, 2021
32
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I have, actually, but unfortunately to no avail. The blackouts replacing the restarts might have happened at the same time I reset windows, but I couldn’t say for sure. I also just found out about and checked the SMART status of my hard drives, and both of them were fine, so I guess that’s another part knocked off the list. I’m going to check event viewer next time it happens, but until then I’m stumped.

maybe remove the graphic card first , and run your system with intel integrated graphic , see if this issue will happen again
if it dont happen again , this issue probably belongs to graphic card or the wires gpu connceted with psu or psu itself

if it happens again , at least you know the graphic card is innocent
 
  • Like
Reactions: white.a.drew
Solution