Question Overheating cpu causes PC to freeze and crash

[Tylergedd]

Hi,
I have been having problems for around a year with my PC now.
The Specs are:
AMD FX 8350 Eight Core Processor 4.00GHz
16GB RAM
Windows 10
Corsair CX750M PSU
AMD Radeon R9 200 Series 4096MB

It’s not great but has been able to run most games pretty well so it shouldn’t be crashing on most if not all games.


My PC’s CPU reaches temps of around 65-75C when I only have Steam or Chrome open and when i try to play any game it normally ends up crashing about 5/10 minutes in because the CPU temp gets so high. No other temps go too high and they all stay at normal levels including my GPU.

I have a cooler on top of my CPU and themal paste has been applied so the connection should be fine.
I took my PC into a repair shop about 2/3 months ago and they claimed the harddrive was the problem. I replaced it and everything seemed to work fine for around a week or two as i played all the games I could with no problems.

However the same problem has started again and I can’t play a game without my PC freezing and completely crashing which causes me to have to restart.

I’m not sure if then problem is the harddrive still as the one I replaced into the PC wasn’t new or if maybe something like my motherboard is damaged as I have read that could be the problem.

Any help is appreciated as I need to fix my PC to continue University work but any heavy programs like photoshop seem to give it trouble at the moment.
Thanks.

 

[Ralston18]

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for error codes, warnings, and even informational events that correspond with the crashes.

Start with Reliability History: Much more user friendly and the timeline format can be revealing.

PSU: noted make, model, wattage. How old, new or used?

Regular heavy gaming and application (Photoshop) use - correct?

 

[ZeroDollarBudget]

You will know its temperatures if you can download a monitoring software, anything from "MSI Afterburner" to what I use "Open Hardware Monitor". Install one of those, launch your game and monitor the temps by alt+tab into the monitor screen. If the temps keep rising, chances are its a sure sign of the CPU needing further investigation. While it may have a cooler and thermal paste, that doesn't mean it was installed or applied properly as too little or too much can cause abnormal temps.

You can also use task manager to see if its simply the system being worked too hard, either disk usage at 100%, 100% CPU or GPU load. You will ultimately need to do more looking before we can narrow down the causes.

 

[Tylergedd]

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for error codes, warnings, and even informational events that correspond with the crashes.

Start with Reliability History: Much more user friendly and the timeline format can be revealing.

PSU: noted make, model, wattage. How old, new or used?

Regular heavy gaming and application (Photoshop) use - correct?

When looking at the Reliability Monitor it shows that when the PC crashes “Critical Event - Windows was not properly shut down” and nothing else is shown.
When using Event Viewer it shows all times the PC crashed and says “The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed or lost power unexpectedly.”

For the PSU, it is a Corsair CX-M series CX750M 750W, it is a few years old now but was bought new.

As from the usage, I use regular gaming from the likes of basic graphic games to high end. I use programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, After Affects, ect...

 

[helpstar]

Did you reapply new thermal paste to the CPU? Which cooler is it? Does the fan spin?
How hot is the CPU getting in game? I would prefer the AMD overdrive tool for this CPU to get the correct temperature reading

open the case and use a big vent to blow fresh air to the components

A very common issue with these FX series systems is that the motherboard´s VRMs are aging over time and can´t handle load and heat anymore. So the voltage will be unstable and the system can´t run stable if these are getting hot. It might automatically decrease the frequency of the CPU till it shuts down to 800MHz to 1400MHz

 

[Tylergedd]

You will know its temperatures if you can download a monitoring software, anything from "MSI Afterburner" to what I use "Open Hardware Monitor". Install one of those, launch your game and monitor the temps by alt+tab into the monitor screen. If the temps keep rising, chances are its a sure sign of the CPU needing further investigation. While it may have a cooler and thermal paste, that doesn't mean it was installed or applied properly as too little or too much can cause abnormal temps.

You can also use task manager to see if its simply the system being worked too hard, either disk usage at 100%, 100% CPU or GPU load. You will ultimately need to do more looking before we can narrow down the causes.

I use SpeedFan and also tried MSI to make sure it was correct. when Steam is open and downloading a game below 1gb the CPU is currently at 76C while GPU is 44CC.

Also I forgot to mention that when I got the PC looked at the other month, they applied a layer of thermal paste and sorted the cooling themselves.

I have opened a game called House flipper to test the temps and usage. When loading the game the disk usage was very high but went back down when I loaded into the game. Memory and CPU are staying below 40% with disk around 0-10%.

The core temp is 77C, GPU 68C and it has now just crashed.

 

[Ralston18]

Try @helpstar's suggestions and determine what you can.

The next step, in my mind, would be to swap in another known working PSU.

That Corsair PSU , being a few years old, could be faltering.

Especially if problems have been occurring for a year so and, I expect, getting worse.

And motherboard related problems could be a contributing factor.

 

[Tylergedd]

Did you reapply new thermal paste to the CPU? Which cooler is it? Does the fan spin?
How hot is the CPU getting in game? I would prefer the AMD overdrive tool for this CPU to get the correct temperature reading

open the case and use a big vent to blow fresh air to the components

A very common issue with these FX series systems is that the motherboard´s VRMs are aging over time and can´t handle load and heat anymore. So the voltage will be unstable and the system can´t run stable if these are getting hot. It might automatically decrease the frequency of the CPU till it shuts down to 800MHz to 1400MHz

The thermal paste was reapplied by the person who had a look at the PC at the repair shop so that should be fine. The cooler seems to be a ARCTIC Freezer 13 CO, I heard that its not great but shouldn’t be causing the pc to shut down. The fan on it spins fine as well as my other 3 on the front, one on bottom and one on the back. They are all going the correct way as I have checked this before hand.

I have downloaded AMD overdrive and the temperature margin stays around -6.6 on all from CPU 0 to CPU 8 when the game is being played.
This is after I have blown fresh air into the machine.

 

[Tylergedd]

https://imgur.com/a/H0L0zRE

View: https://imgur.com/a/H0L0zRE
Attached photos showing temperatures.

 

[GregoryDude]

I suspect what was mentioned earlier, the motherboard VRMs may be faltering.

However, I would try going into bios and set your case and CPU fans to either "DC" or 100% and see if it still crashes, as another way to troubleshoot. If it fixes the problem, go back to the bios and set a reasonable fan curve that you can live with without it crashing, unless you are ok with 100% and the resulting noise.

At this point, I'd try anything.

 

[Tylergedd]

I suspect what was mentioned earlier, the motherboard VRMs may be faltering.

However, I would try going into bios and set your case and CPU fans to either "DC" or 100% and see if it still crashes, as another way to troubleshoot. If it fixes the problem, go back to the bios and set a reasonable fan curve that you can live with without it crashing, unless you are ok with 100% and the resulting noise.

At this point, I'd try anything.

I have downloaded AMD Overdrive and found an option on turbo cores which was ticked. I unticked it and since then the PC has not crashed and I have tested the same game for around 30 minutes. I think maybe the cores had been using too much voltage as it seemed as they were going over the targeted and have been at the right level now.

I'm currently testing some heavier games and programs to see if this has fixed it, if not I will try this out and see what happens, thanks for the help!