Question PC Reboots moments after loading into games.

[Chrisvro]

About a week ago I had been playing a game for about 2 hours when suddenly my PC rebooted itself, no BSOD and no signs of any errors logged by Windows. It was the first time this had happened so I just let it slide as a possible random generic crash which can happen. I believe I played games again a couple of times after this with no issue.

Jump forward a week, I have been away for 5 days. So this means my PC hasn't been booted up for said amount of days. I came back to play a game, and now it seems I cannot be in any game for more than 30 seconds without it doing the same reboot. It seems performing any other task in Windows is fine. I haven't had much time to troubleshoot tonight because I work late and will be going to bed early because I'm working early. But here is what I have managed to do tonight:

Reset CMOS and BIOS (didn't work)
I also logged the reboot moment twice using HWiNFO64. I have attached both logs to this thread. I haven't had time to look through them tonight so I'm hoping someone will do my dirty work while I'm sleeping 😉

It's almost like it's overheating... but my temps are perfectly fine.
I'm leaning towards PSU, but I'm not jumping to conclusions just yet.

Asus ROG Maximus XIII Extreme Glacial MB
I9 10850K
32GB DDR4 @3600mhz
Gigabyte Aorus Geforce RTX 3090 xtreme
Corsair RM850

Log 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kl218s18uNroIdIipAwrXeDSlyfUoP0f/view?usp=sharing
Log 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dyc-B9I5TaIzpBab8eo6n2AyLVycvG09/view?usp=sharing

 

[Aeacus]

Since your temps are within reason, it's the PSU who is acting up.

Now, Corsair RM is good quality PSU, but the age of it may have made it capricious, not willing to work with you anymore. Depending which iteration of RM850 you have, it 1st came out either in 2013 or 2015. And it ever had 5 years of warranty. So, your PSU is past it's prime.

Here, i suggest that you look towards new PSU. And since you're using RTX 3090, with very high transient power spikes, i suggest that you look for 1kW PSU (1000W), when factoring in all possible transient power spikes.

What are GPU transient power spikes? A video to watch:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRyyCsuHFQ


For new 1kW PSU, solid options would be: Seasonic Focus/PRIME or Corsair RMx/RMe/HX/HXi/AX/AXi or Super Flower Leadex Titanium/V Pro.

 

[Chrisvro]

Since your temps are within reason, it's the PSU who is acting up.

Now, Corsair RM is good quality PSU, but the age of it may have made it capricious, not willing to work with you anymore. Depending which iteration of RM850 you have, it 1st came out either in 2013 or 2015. And it ever had 5 years of warranty. So, your PSU is past it's prime.

Here, i suggest that you look towards new PSU. And since you're using RTX 3090, with very high transient power spikes, i suggest that you look for 1kW PSU (1000W), when factoring in all possible transient power

You reckon? I only bought the PSU in February of 2021, I don’t see why it would start to act up already… of course it’s possible, but seems a bit unlikely due to its age. Again, I have put my 3090 under super intense loads with that PSU hundreds of times and never had a single issue.

 

[Aeacus]

You reckon? I only bought the PSU in February of 2021, I don’t see why it would start to act up already… of course it’s possible, but seems a bit unlikely due to its age. Again, I have put my 3090 under super intense loads with that PSU hundreds of times and never had a single issue.

Until you don't test with 2nd, good quality, known to work PSU, you can not rule out PSU issue.

Random reboots or shutdowns are mostly caused by 2 issues:

1. CPU/GPU overheats and to prevent any damage, system shuts down.
2. PSU fails to deliver enough power to the GPU or fails to keep smooth enough voltage for PC's operation.

These two cover 90% of cases of PC randomly rebooting/shutting down. The rest 9% is by main electricity grid issues (blackout, brownout), whereby having an UPS will fix the issue. And of course, 1% is always reserved for the ghost in the machine (aka unexplained anomaly).

 

[Chrisvro]

Until you don't test with 2nd, good quality, known to work PSU, you can not rule out PSU issue.

Random reboots or shutdowns are mostly caused by 2 issues:

1. CPU/GPU overheats and to prevent any damage, system shuts down.
2. PSU fails to deliver enough power to the GPU or fails to keep smooth enough voltage for PC's operation.

These two cover 90% of cases of PC randomly rebooting/shutting down. The rest 9% is by main electricity grid issues (blackout, brownout), whereby having an UPS will fix the issue. And of course, 1% is always reserved for the ghost in the machine (aka unexplained anomaly).

What I do notice about the reboot is that it’s not like a typical restart, not like an instant reboot as if i pressed the reset button or restart. It completely shuts off for about 3 seconds, then turns itself back on. Is this normal behaviour for one’s PSU shutting itself due to not being able to handle the system? I always thought it would just completely shut off and not reboot, but then again I have never encountered this issue before so I’m not really sure. And different PSUs would most likely handle it differently. If so, then yes, I can probably almost confirm the PSU being the culprit.

 

[Aeacus]

What I do notice about the reboot is that it’s not like a typical restart, not like an instant reboot as if i pressed the reset button or restart. It completely shuts off for about 3 seconds, then turns itself back on. Is this normal behaviour for one’s PSU shutting itself due to not being able to handle the system? I always thought it would just completely shut off and not reboot

Depending on why PSU is killing power to PC. Either defect within PSU or some PSU protections kick in, can result in longer than instant shut off. E.g OCP would be something that PSU would require a bit of time to normalize the current, before it's ready to work again.

All-in-all, proper PSU never kills the power on it's own. And if PSU does it because you put way too high of a load on it (e.g 700W load on 550W rated PSU), then it's not PSU's fault of killing the power to the PC. However, you've used your PC and this PSU with high loads before, problem free. Meaning that PSU, when working right, is capable of powering your PC. But as of late, PSU has developed some kind of fault, where it is incapable of keeping your PC powered on.

The week you were away from your PC, was your PC plugged into the mains?

 

[Chrisvro]

The week you were away from your PC, was your PC plugged into the mains?

Well, Yes it was for a few days, I totally forgot to unplug it which I totally should have… but my dad was home, and he noticed a lighting storm incoming so he unplugged it. It was probably only plugged in for about 3 days without use while I was away. But I know a power surge while I was away definitely wasn’t the cause of the issue for 2 main reasons, that being:

1: I noticed the issue once before I went away
2: My dad was home the entire time I was away so he definitely would have known if there was a power surge or something.

It seems like the issue just worsened itself by alot whilst I was away and the PC without use.

Thanks very much for your help by the way, not sure if I said that earlier.

 

[Aeacus]

My dad was home the entire time I was away so he definitely would have known if there was a power surge or something.

Unless your dad has specific equipment plugged into the mains, that 24/7 monitor the well being of the supplied electricity, there is no way of telling what kind of issues electricity grid spew out.

It doesn't only take a surge to fry electronics. There are also brownouts (voltage drops) and blackouts too. And not all surges are high enough to be noticed by humans, but are high enough to fry the electronics.

All-in-all, what could've been the underlying issue, was the electricity grid, by damaging your PSU some time ago (the point where you once saw this issue happen), and made it worse during the time you were away.

Overall, you're looking towards new PSU and with that kind of expensive hardware you have, an UPS as well.

 

[Chrisvro]

Unless your dad has specific equipment plugged into the mains, that 24/7 monitor the well being of the supplied electricity, there is no way of telling what kind of issues electricity grid spew out.

It doesn't only take a surge to fry electronics. There are also brownouts (voltage drops) and blackouts too. And not all surges are high enough to be noticed by humans, but are high enough to fry the electronics.

All-in-all, what could've been the underlying issue, was the electricity grid, by damaging your PSU some time ago (the point where you once saw this issue happen), and made it worse during the time you were away.

Overall, you're looking towards new PSU and with that kind of expensive hardware you have, an UPS as well.

Just an update: Replaced my PSU with the Super flower Leadex titanium 1600W. My issue is now resolved.