Question PC randomly shutting down after 5 years of use.

[Johnrocha]

Hello there, Tom's Hardware forums!

So, I recently just built a new Ryzen machine for myself and gave my "old" gaming PC from 2013 to my sister.

Before I proceed with my post, here are the specs of the "old" gaming PC build from 2013 that my sister now has:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K (not OC'ed)
CPU Cooler: beQuiet Dark Rock 2
GPU: Nvidia GTX 780 (not OC'ed)
RAM: 16GB of DDR3 dual-channel Corsair Vengeance @1600MHZ
MB: Asus Sabertooth Z87
PSU: Corsair AX860

Upon building my new machine, I tested everything and there was nothing wrong with it, which is great. I then decided to give the "old" PC a clean-up before giving it to my sister. Simply opened it up, cleaned it up with my air compressor machine as I usually do and changed the CPU's thermal paste.

NOTE: These random shutdowns never happened before the clean-up.

One thing occured though: one of the black plastic stand-offs half-circles in the top left (the ones that hold the 4 CPU cooler's screws in place) fell inside the Sabertooth's thermal armour while I was re-installing the Dark Rock 2 cooler. I tried removing the entire thermal armour but never found the damn small black thing. I managed to securely install the cooler either way and everything seems to be normal, temperature wise, according to all the stress testing I've done.

Here's the problem: a few hours after the clean-up, the PC started to shutdown randomly for no apparent reason (no beeps from the motherboard either). One time it said that "The memory address is insufficient due to intel thunderbolt", but let me proceed to Windows 10 either way and never showed up again after re-booting. Another time, it said that the "BOOTMGR is corrupted. System cannot boot." But it booted either way afterwards.

Sometimes the graphics card's "Geforce GTX" LEDs flash 2 or 3 times really quick when I turn the PC on (but still boots with no problem) so I re-installed it and tried out a few older and updated drivers.

PC still does the random shutdowns.

I changed my RAM sticks from slots 2 and 4 to slots 1 and 3, but it still shuts down randomly for no reason. All my temperatures are fine and everything is the same as it was before the clean-up.
I never even overclocked the CPU or GPU. Everything is stock and practically brand-new.

This only started happening after the clean-up, which is very strange.

Do you guys have any clue to what this could be? This has NEVER happened before, and I've used the PC extensively for gaming these past 5 years with no issues. I've never done a clean Windows install on the PC either, apart from the transition update from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

Thank you for your time and I REALLY apologize for the long post. Just didn't want to leave any detail out.

 

[Lutfij]

Which version of Windows 10 are you currently on? We're on 1903 as of this writing. Also, latest BIOS update for your motherboard? I would advise you try and retrieve the stand off you've lost since it's possible that an uneven mount may be the issue.

Did you remove dust/debris from the PSU as well?

 

[Johnrocha]

Which version of Windows 10 are you currently on? We're on 1903 as of this writing. Also, latest BIOS update for your motherboard? I would advise you try and retrieve the stand off you've lost since it's possible that an uneven mount may be the issue.

Did you remove dust/debris from the PSU as well?

Thank you for the reply.

I'm also on version 1903 of Windows 10 Pro. I also updated my BIOS with the latest drivers last year (version 2302, dated 06-Mar-17). It's the latest one for the Sabertooth Z87, according to Asus' website. I've also properly cleaned my PSU from all the dust and debris (it barely even had any dust too).

Do you really think this could be happening due to the lost stand-off? It could make sense,since it didn't happen before, when I had all the 4 plastic half-circle stand-offs for the screws. I just can't find it anywhere.

The 4 screws themselves (that come out through the backplate for the cooler) are really worn-out as well so I should definitely get new ones. Can I buy those black plastic half-circle stand-offs anywhere though? Maybe I should try switching to the stock Intel CPU cooler for a few days and see if the random shutdowns happen?

 

[Johnrocha]

Which version of Windows 10 are you currently on? We're on 1903 as of this writing. Also, latest BIOS update for your motherboard? I would advise you try and retrieve the stand off you've lost since it's possible that an uneven mount may be the issue.

Did you remove dust/debris from the PSU as well?

UPDATE: I managed to recover the lost black rubber standoff and bought 4 new identical screws for the cooler. It seems a lot more stable after installing it with all the 4 standoffs as expected.

I'll now proceed and do some testing in the next few days, see if any more shutdowns occur. If they do, I'll just wait for beQuiet's official mounting kit to arrive. Even the CPU temperatures are better this time around, so we'll see how it goes.

I'll keep you updated in the next few days.