Question PC randomly black screens and restarts while gaming ?

[cheesecake_shake]

I got a prebuilt pc in 2020 and this pc worked great for almost 2 years. In November last year, I started to have an issue in American Truck Simulator where at any random point the pc would black screen and automatically restart. When it first started happening in ATS, I would be able to continue playing with no issues for the rest of the night after it happens once. But over the last few months this issue has gotten much worse and has spread to other steam related games and apps and now it has happened in ATS, BeamNG.drive, Scrap Mechanic, and it has happened while opening SteamVR. I havent opened ATS in a while because of this issue so I dont know how bad it is now, but BeamNG.drive is just barely playable if i play it safe and Scrap Mechanic is completely unplayable in certain multiplayer situations. I also have no idea how often it would happen in SteamVR because I havent opened it since the first time it restarted my pc.

Eventually I found a consistent way of triggering it and got a video of it:

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/AeR9gzxLaY8


All event viewer says is "the previous shutdown was unexpected" and "the system rebooted without cleanly shutting down" so no answers there. Ive tried completely cleanly reinstalling windows but that didnt help at all. CPU temps are slightly hotter than they could be, but are still reasonable, and GPU temps are good. It seems like it could be a psu issue, but Im not entirely sure. Ive looked on multiple forums for similar posts and the only post i found with my exact symptoms had a reply about the psu marked as the solution, but I want confirmation before I go looking for new parts, or contacting manufacturers to get parts fixed or replaced.

Specs:
ASRock B450M/ac
Ryzen 5 3600
Gigabyte GTX 1660 Super
(2x8gb) random HP ram sticks that came with pc
(2x8gb) corsair vengeance ram*
HP 500gb nvme ssd (boot drive)
1tb Samsung 870 EVO ssd
500w Thermaltake Smart PSU:

Thermaltake Smart SP-500AH2NKW ATX12V & EPS12V Power Supply - Newegg.com

Buy Thermaltake Smart Series 500W SLI/CrossFire Ready Continuous Power ATX 12V V2.3 / EPS 12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply Haswell Ready PS-SPD-0500NPCWUS-W with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

*corsair sticks were installed in February this year, 3 months after issue began. Problem persisted when tested without hp sticks, so it seems like ram can be ruled out as the cause

 

[Lutfij]

500w Thermaltake Smart psu:
How old is the PSU in your build? Even if the PSU was brand new, that's not a unit I'd have in a build, any build. Try and replace the unit with a sourced (borrowed, not bought)reliably built, 550W donor PSU and see if the issue persists.

 

[drivinfast247]

I'd replace that PSU right off the start.

 

[cheesecake_shake]

500w Thermaltake Smart psu:
How old is the PSU in your build? Even if the PSU was brand new, that's not a unit I'd have in a build, any build. Try and replace the unit with a sourced (borrowed, not bought)reliably built, 550W donor PSU and see if the issue persists.

I am not sure how old the psu is and Im not aware of any way to find out at this point, Id just assume it was new like all the other parts seem to be. I dont know anyone that has a psu I could borrow, it appears my only option right now to test another one would be to purchase one, which I can probably do soon.

 

[DaleH]

I am not sure how old the psu is and Im not aware of any way to find out at this point, Id just assume it was new like all the other parts seem to be. I dont know anyone that has a psu I could borrow, it appears my only option right now to test another one would be to purchase one, which I can probably do soon.

Even new parts fail.