PC restarts/crashes sometimes when gaming

Aviator92

Reputable
Aug 28, 2015
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4,510
I am having an intermittent problem I have been fighting for months! Sometimes while I am gaming all of a sudden the screen will go black, the sound will freeze up (although sometimes it will make the windows error sound), and the monitor loses signal, sometimes the PC will restart on its own, other times I have to manually restart it.

I looked in the Event Viewer and the only thing I saw was a Kernel Power 41 error.

The problem is intermittent. Sometimes I can game for hours over a couple days and it will run perfectly fine, other times it will crash within a few minutes of loading a game. What is weird is that when I am not gaming the PC can run fine for weeks. Multiple games are affected (BF4, GTA V, GTA IV, TMStadium) but not all games.

So far I have formatted and completely reinstalled windows, and updated and reset the BIOS but the problem did not go away, so I am thinking it is a hardware issue.

Here are my system specs:
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 1607 (clean install NO upgrade)
Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 5 motherboard
Intel i5 6600K at stock speed (never overclocked)
2 x 8GB Ripjaws V DDR4-2800
ASUS Strix GTX970
Corsair 650W PSU
Samsung EVO 1TB SATA SSD

P.S. - not sure if this is could be a problem, but sometimes I notice a high pitch whine coming from inside the computer when running a game.
 
Solution
You're right this is probably hardware. To help isolate the problem, check the following items:

Overclocking: Disable overclocking to see whether the issue occurs when the system is run at the correct speed.

Check the memory: Verify the memory by using a memory checker. Verify that each memory chip is the same speed and that it is configured correctly in the system.

Power supply: Make sure that the power supply has enough wattage to appropriately handle the installed devices. If you added memory, installed a newer processor, installed additional drives, or added external devices, such devices can require more energy than the current power supply can provide consistently.
Overheating: Check whether the system is overheating by...

LukeFatwalker

Reputable
Dec 29, 2015
733
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5,660
You're right this is probably hardware. To help isolate the problem, check the following items:

Overclocking: Disable overclocking to see whether the issue occurs when the system is run at the correct speed.

Check the memory: Verify the memory by using a memory checker. Verify that each memory chip is the same speed and that it is configured correctly in the system.

Power supply: Make sure that the power supply has enough wattage to appropriately handle the installed devices. If you added memory, installed a newer processor, installed additional drives, or added external devices, such devices can require more energy than the current power supply can provide consistently.
Overheating: Check whether the system is overheating by examining the internal temperature of the hardware.
 
Solution