Hey everyone,
Kind of at the end of my tether here and hoping that I may be able to get some help. Warning that this is going to be long but I'm hoping someone with more expertise than me will be able to point me in the right direction here.
To start, let me list my specifications.
i7 4770k
Asus Sabertooth Z87
16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum
EVGA RTX 2060 Super
NZXT C650
I know many of my PC components are old first off, but hear me out.
About 4-5 months ago I started having some really random problems with my PC shutting off, usually during games. It would randomly shut off and then restart, as if someone had ripped the cord out. No errors, except the occasional ‘windows didn’t shut down correctly last time’ type of message. No biggie, it could be that it's overheating I thought. So ran some stress tests and CPU temps were never above 65°C in prime 95 and GPU temps were never above 70°C in various tests, furmark and unigine etc , so I thought it can’t be overheating. Most importantly, it didn't shut off at all during any of these stress tests.
Fine, maybe it’s the PSU I thought. This system is from late 2013 so wouldn’t surprise me if the PSU was on its way out. So I swapped my corsair 750w PSU for the NZXT one. Exactly the same issue happened again. Right, well maybe it’s the ram, so I downloaded and ran MemTest86+. The first time I ran it I stepped away and came back to it about 30 mins later with all the screens off but my CPU fan at max RPM, while all other fans were off.
Okay so must be the ram then, but I’ll run the test again, just to make sure. Ran the second time without any issue. 3 hours later all my ram had passed the stress test.
So lastly, I have installed a fresh version of windows, not removing all of my files, but I manually removed most of the clutter and reinstalled. Nope still having the same issues.
The really weird, and very annoying part of it is that I can’t replicate it on demand. Sometimes I can play for 10 hours over the course of a week and have absolutely no issues, or like earlier where I booted up Forza Horizon 5 and within 20 mins it had restarted and the CPU fan was at max rpm just like when I ran the first memory test. Sometimes it will do it in a game and a couple of weeks back for example it restarted and before I could even unlock my pc it restarted again.
Sometimes it will restart and then I will boot up a game and it does it again 5 mins later, sometimes it will restart and I can boot up and play something for the rest of the evening. My wife has also had it happen to her while using Revit.
I go into event viewer and all it tells me is that ‘Windows shut down unexpectedly’, so I’ve no idea what is causing it. It doesn’t seem to show any events for about 20 mins before the shut down happens either.
The only other thing I can think off is that I added a Samsung 1tb SSD back in November of 2021, around the time it started doing this weird random shut down thing. I’ve tried it on games loading from that SSD and a different SSD but the problem is still the same. I will try and unplug it and see if that is the issue somehow, but as I've mentioned it could be a week before it shuts down again or it could do it in 5 minutes. I'm also going to update the BIOS thought haven't done that in at least 4 years I reckon, so weird it's started doing it now.
I would just replace the older components in my PC, but the problem is at the moment I’m perfectly happy with how they are performing. It’s proved that it can go for a long time without having a panic and randomly restarting, as it’s been doing that on the above hardware, with a different PSU, for at least the past 2 years. If I can narrow it down to one component or one thing at least I can deal with it, but I can’t!
Any advice welcome!
Kind of at the end of my tether here and hoping that I may be able to get some help. Warning that this is going to be long but I'm hoping someone with more expertise than me will be able to point me in the right direction here.
To start, let me list my specifications.
i7 4770k
Asus Sabertooth Z87
16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum
EVGA RTX 2060 Super
NZXT C650
I know many of my PC components are old first off, but hear me out.
About 4-5 months ago I started having some really random problems with my PC shutting off, usually during games. It would randomly shut off and then restart, as if someone had ripped the cord out. No errors, except the occasional ‘windows didn’t shut down correctly last time’ type of message. No biggie, it could be that it's overheating I thought. So ran some stress tests and CPU temps were never above 65°C in prime 95 and GPU temps were never above 70°C in various tests, furmark and unigine etc , so I thought it can’t be overheating. Most importantly, it didn't shut off at all during any of these stress tests.
Fine, maybe it’s the PSU I thought. This system is from late 2013 so wouldn’t surprise me if the PSU was on its way out. So I swapped my corsair 750w PSU for the NZXT one. Exactly the same issue happened again. Right, well maybe it’s the ram, so I downloaded and ran MemTest86+. The first time I ran it I stepped away and came back to it about 30 mins later with all the screens off but my CPU fan at max RPM, while all other fans were off.
Okay so must be the ram then, but I’ll run the test again, just to make sure. Ran the second time without any issue. 3 hours later all my ram had passed the stress test.
So lastly, I have installed a fresh version of windows, not removing all of my files, but I manually removed most of the clutter and reinstalled. Nope still having the same issues.
The really weird, and very annoying part of it is that I can’t replicate it on demand. Sometimes I can play for 10 hours over the course of a week and have absolutely no issues, or like earlier where I booted up Forza Horizon 5 and within 20 mins it had restarted and the CPU fan was at max rpm just like when I ran the first memory test. Sometimes it will do it in a game and a couple of weeks back for example it restarted and before I could even unlock my pc it restarted again.
Sometimes it will restart and then I will boot up a game and it does it again 5 mins later, sometimes it will restart and I can boot up and play something for the rest of the evening. My wife has also had it happen to her while using Revit.
I go into event viewer and all it tells me is that ‘Windows shut down unexpectedly’, so I’ve no idea what is causing it. It doesn’t seem to show any events for about 20 mins before the shut down happens either.
The only other thing I can think off is that I added a Samsung 1tb SSD back in November of 2021, around the time it started doing this weird random shut down thing. I’ve tried it on games loading from that SSD and a different SSD but the problem is still the same. I will try and unplug it and see if that is the issue somehow, but as I've mentioned it could be a week before it shuts down again or it could do it in 5 minutes. I'm also going to update the BIOS thought haven't done that in at least 4 years I reckon, so weird it's started doing it now.
I would just replace the older components in my PC, but the problem is at the moment I’m perfectly happy with how they are performing. It’s proved that it can go for a long time without having a panic and randomly restarting, as it’s been doing that on the above hardware, with a different PSU, for at least the past 2 years. If I can narrow it down to one component or one thing at least I can deal with it, but I can’t!
Any advice welcome!