[SOLVED] PC randomly reboots and now powers off. LONGTIME PC builder, totally baffled here

fireaza

Distinguished
May 9, 2011
196
20
18,685
Hi there, I'm having a weird issue with my PC. I've been building PCs for well over half my life, but I'm stumped here!

At first, an issue appeared where my PC would randomly freeze for a few seconds then reboot. There's no BSOD, probably because Windows 10 hides this by default as I recall. Seemed to happen at random, but only when I was in Windows, it never happened during games. So I figured it must have been a program, probably Chrome since I use it a lot. But I've tried disabling hardware acceleration, running it in incognito mode (to disable extensions) but it still happened.

I originally figured that it wasn't due to faulty hardware since I could game for hours without any sudden reboots. And if anything is going to stress the system the system and cause faulty hardware to fall over, it would be gaming. And that was true for a long time, until I had the system suddenly power-off during a game. The odd thing is, this was different to what normally happens. Instead of rebooting (i.e the fans and lights are still on) like it usually does, it straight-up powered off. Then powered back on after a few seconds.

I've checked the Event Viewer, but it's not much help. It does record every time it's suddenly rebooted, but it just says "Event 41, kernel power".

In terms of checking the hardware, my PSU's watts seem to be sufficient, with my PC running around 500w when gaming. Cooling seems to be fine, I ran an hour of Prime95 and it only reached into the 80s before settling into the 60s.

I'm kinda suspecting my CPU. I know that if you try to overclock it at all, it's really unstable, even an XMP profile causes problems. I've never heard of a faulty CPU, but I guess it's possible.

Anyway, I'm out of ideas, any clues guys? I've even tried a fresh Windows install, but that didn't change anything.

Anyway, here's my specs:

OS: Windows 10 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K
CPU Cooler: Corsair H150i PRO
Motherboard: Asus ROG MAXIMUS X CODE
GPU: Asus STRIX GeForce RTX 2080Ti
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB (4x 8GB) DDR4-3200
PSU: SeaSonic PRIME Titanium 750W 80+ Titanium
 
Solution
If they are not identical you can check which stick goes to each kit either by their label or by booting with one stick at a time and checking all timings (primary, secondary, tertiary etc) in bios. If you find a difference in timings then ram is different. Try to boot with the correct kit with only 16 gb, if the problem is resolved, we may be able to fine tune the memory by forcing some timings in your bios.
Hi there, I'm having a weird issue with my PC. I've been building PCs for well over half my life, but I'm stumped here!

At first, an issue appeared where my PC would randomly freeze for a few seconds then reboot. There's no BSOD, probably because Windows 10 hides this by default as I recall. Seemed to happen at random, but only when I was in Windows, it never happened during games. So I figured it must have been a program, probably Chrome since I use it a lot. But I've tried disabling hardware acceleration, running it in incognito mode (to disable extensions) but it still happened.

I originally figured that it wasn't due to faulty hardware since I could game for hours without any sudden reboots. And if anything is going to stress the system the system and cause faulty hardware to fall over, it would be gaming. And that was true for a long time, until I had the system suddenly power-off during a game. The odd thing is, this was different to what normally happens. Instead of rebooting (i.e the fans and lights are still on) like it usually does, it straight-up powered off. Then powered back on after a few seconds.

I've checked the Event Viewer, but it's not much help. It does record every time it's suddenly rebooted, but it just says "Event 41, kernel power".

In terms of checking the hardware, my PSU's watts seem to be sufficient, with my PC running around 500w when gaming. Cooling seems to be fine, I ran an hour of Prime95 and it only reached into the 80s before settling into the 60s.

I'm kinda suspecting my CPU. I know that if you try to overclock it at all, it's really unstable, even an XMP profile causes problems. I've never heard of a faulty CPU, but I guess it's possible.

Anyway, I'm out of ideas, any clues guys? I've even tried a fresh Windows install, but that didn't change anything.

Anyway, here's my specs:

OS: Windows 10 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K
CPU Cooler: Corsair H150i PRO
Motherboard: Asus ROG MAXIMUS X CODE
GPU: Asus STRIX GeForce RTX 2080Ti
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB (4x 8GB) DDR4-3200
PSU: SeaSonic PRIME Titanium 750W 80+ Titanium

could be the motherboard? An XMP profile shouldn’t cause any issue.
 

fireaza

Distinguished
May 9, 2011
196
20
18,685
could be the motherboard? An XMP profile shouldn’t cause any issue.
I'm not sure. My only experience with faulty motherboards is one that was causing problems from the day of purchase. How would I be able to tell? Also, it seems I was getting confused with the "automatically reboot" setting in Windows 10 when it comes to BSODs. It seems like I should be able to see a BSOD, but I'm not in this case, which is just leaving me more baffled.
 
I'm not sure. My only experience with faulty motherboards is one that was causing problems from the day of purchase. How would I be able to tell? Also, it seems I was getting confused with the "automatically reboot" setting in Windows 10 when it comes to BSODs. It seems like I should be able to see a BSOD, but I'm not in this case, which is just leaving me more baffled.
Could be windows being windows and needing a fresh install. If you have a spare drive you can make a new boot drive and see if it does the same
 
Could it be possible that you have a problem with the sleep state on your system? When you're gaming your system is not trying to sleep but when you're at idle in Windows and you have a sleep settings of 15 mins.

I'm just throwing this because Phaaze88 could be on the right track with the RAM and there isn't much left.
 
I incline to believe the problem could be towards your memory, imc, motherboard. Have you tested your ram one by one with bootable memtest? Do this first. If all of your ram is good, try running with only 16 gb of ram to release some load from the memory controller.
 

Phaaze88

Titan
Ambassador
Could it be possible that you have a problem with the sleep state on your system? When you're gaming your system is not trying to sleep but when you're at idle in Windows and you have a sleep settings of 15 mins.
I've only ever heard of others running into problems with sleep settings; never seen it myself, likely because I always disabled it and other power saving features...
It sleeps and saves power when I turn it off XD
 

fireaza

Distinguished
May 9, 2011
196
20
18,685
You already tried reinstalling Windows, and nothing.
The usual suspect in sudden restarts is the psu, but that checks out fine... next suspect would be ram.

Is that a true 4x 8GB kit, or did you combine two of 2x 8GB kits?
As I recall, I bought 2x of the same 8GB kits. I would have expected this would mean the RAM is basically identical? But if not, might this be the cause of what I'm seeing and is it possible the problem is only showing up over a year since it was built?

Could it be possible that you have a problem with the sleep state on your system? When you're gaming your system is not trying to sleep but when you're at idle in Windows and you have a sleep settings of 15 mins.

I'm just throwing this because Phaaze88 could be on the right track with the RAM and there isn't much left.
I have my PC's sleep setting set to "never" so I would hope we can rule sleep settings out.

I incline to believe the problem could be towards your memory, imc, motherboard. Have you tested your ram one by one with bootable memtest? Do this first. If all of your ram is good, try running with only 16 gb of ram to release some load from the memory controller.
I've never used Memtest before, when you say "one by one" do you mean testing one-by-one in the program itself, or do I need to physically remove my RAM and test one installed at a time? Do you have any recommendations on what tests settings to use, or are just the default ones OK?
 

Phaaze88

Titan
Ambassador
As I recall, I bought 2x of the same 8GB kits. I would have expected this would mean the RAM is basically identical? But if not, might this be the cause of what I'm seeing and is it possible the problem is only showing up over a year since it was built?
It is not identical.
Test with only 1 of the 2 kits. Hopefully you haven't mixed the 2 kits and forgotten which goes with which...
 
If they are not identical you can check which stick goes to each kit either by their label or by booting with one stick at a time and checking all timings (primary, secondary, tertiary etc) in bios. If you find a difference in timings then ram is different. Try to boot with the correct kit with only 16 gb, if the problem is resolved, we may be able to fine tune the memory by forcing some timings in your bios.
 
Solution