[SOLVED] PC turns off briefly when gaming, bad voltage country

[bas550]

Hi all,

Last year I moved to Papua New Guinea. Took my pc with me (took it apart and rebuild it here). Severe lack of computer related stores here so everything has to come from Australia, so can't run to the store and pick new parts up.

Build my pc ~5 years ago (spec below) and never had any issues. A few months ago my PC started to turn itself off when gaming, normally within ~10 minutes and if I try to game after rebooting then, a couple of minutes. This varies by how intense the game is. There is a voltage fluctuation problem in this country where voltage can drop significantly. I bought a UPS the other day but apparently I can't use my surge protector extended cable with it (says so in the description), and the nearest plug next to my pc of course isn't working and the electrician hasn't decided to turn up yet. When it's plugged in the UPS when gaming goes haywire after about 10 minutes and everything (including monitor, sound) turns off (this is not the case when it's not plugged into UPS, when only PC turns off.

Personally I'm suspecting thermal paste gone bad, as the only one I could find was some from a chinese shop and I never heard of the brand. When I re-assembled my system when I moved here it worked fine and I was gaming for hours. I have the Evo 212 cooler which I'm sure many of you know is a PITA to installed when not taking the entire mobo out of the case. I re-applied thermal paste the other day, cooler sliding all over the place when applying but problem persisted.

Event viewer shows Event ID 41 - Kernel Power but no additional details.

CPU when gaming is around 53-54c so well outside of thermal shutdown range.

Spec:
6600K
Z170a Sli Plus mobo
1080ti Zotac
Coolermaster 550w PSU (I know it's marginal but I used to run OC on this, now took OC off and even the turbo off so instead of 4.1ghz I'm at 3.5...same issue)
16gb ram

When I play a game like space engineers or insurgency Sandstorm it goes off very quickly. An old game (so not intense at all) like F1 Challenge (from 2002!) I never have any issues. Sometimes at night it switched off but I can't tell if it's due to short powercut or the recurring problem during some intense background activity (virus scan or whatever).

Any help is appreciated.

Frankly if I have to order new CPU paste I'll order a new cooler (AIO so easy to mount) and a new PSU I think.

 

[Quanticriver]

Hi all,

Last year I moved to Papua New Guinea. Took my pc with me (took it apart and rebuild it here). Severe lack of computer related stores here so everything has to come from Australia, so can't run to the store and pick new parts up.

Build my pc ~5 years ago (spec below) and never had any issues. A few months ago my PC started to turn itself off when gaming, normally within ~10 minutes and if I try to game after rebooting then, a couple of minutes. This varies by how intense the game is. There is a voltage fluctuation problem in this country where voltage can drop significantly. I bought a UPS the other day but apparently I can't use my surge protector extended cable with it (says so in the description), and the nearest plug next to my pc of course isn't working and the electrician hasn't decided to turn up yet. When it's plugged in the UPS when gaming goes haywire after about 10 minutes and everything (including monitor, sound) turns off (this is not the case when it's not plugged into UPS, when only PC turns off.

Personally I'm suspecting thermal paste gone bad, as the only one I could find was some from a chinese shop and I never heard of the brand. When I re-assembled my system when I moved here it worked fine and I was gaming for hours. I have the Evo 212 cooler which I'm sure many of you know is a PITA to installed when not taking the entire mobo out of the case. I re-applied thermal paste the other day, cooler sliding all over the place when applying but problem persisted.

Event viewer shows Event ID 41 - Kernel Power but no additional details.

CPU when gaming is around 53-54c so well outside of thermal shutdown range.

Spec:
6600K
Z170a Sli Plus mobo
1080ti Zotac
Coolermaster 550w PSU (I know it's marginal but I used to run OC on this, now took OC off and even the turbo off so instead of 4.1ghz I'm at 3.5...same issue)
16gb ram

When I play a game like space engineers or insurgency Sandstorm it goes off very quickly. An old game (so not intense at all) like F1 Challenge (from 2002!) I never have any issues. Sometimes at night it switched off but I can't tell if it's due to short powercut or the recurring problem during some intense background activity (virus scan or whatever).

Any help is appreciated.

Frankly if I have to order new CPU paste I'll order a new cooler (AIO so easy to mount) and a new PSU I think.

Hello mate

Have you ran speccy to check your temps? (as you say it might be your thermal protection kicking in and shutting down your pc)

i'd argue that your psu is giving you grief
Any event that causes your pc to just lose power is a big pointer towards your PSU
Also your event viewer only states the power loss, no events leading up to it
It would be best to verify with another PSU, but as you described, there's not too much chance of that happening

Personally i'd order a quality unit that can deal with the voltage spikes (high end corsair/seasonic)
and hope it solves/mediates the issue

 

[bas550]

Hello mate

Have you ran speccy to check your temps? (as you say it might be your thermal protection kicking in and shutting down your pc)

i'd argue that your psu is giving you grief
Any event that causes your pc to just lose power is a big pointer towards your PSU
Also your event viewer only states the power loss, no events leading up to it
It would be best to verify with another PSU, but as you described, there's not too much chance of that happening

Personally i'd order a quality unit that can deal with the voltage spikes (high end corsair/seasonic)
and hope it solves/mediates the issue

Thank you! Spoke to another techy friend of mine and said PSU as well so seems ever more likely. Also with the UPS going haywire presumably it's all linked together.

Turns out my current PSU is a corsair as well, not cooler master...it's a Corsair VS550, Semi modular. Had a look at Corsair's site, I've a feeling it's pretty old (had it laying around after another 1500w PSU failed years ago in an old build) so maybe it doesn't have the protection build in.

This may be a stupid question but what is the difference between these 2 PSU apart from 100w?

https://www.mwave.com.au/product/co...2-gold-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-ac14754

https://www.mwave.com.au/product/corsair-rm850-850w-80-plus-gold-fully-modular-power-supply-ac25316

Exact same price but the 750w unit has an ''x'' at the end, which through some over-thinking on my own part has led me to believe that this could be an ATX specific unit and the other one something else entirely. If I still lived in civilization I wouldn't care as I could order and send back the next day but here I'm literally ordering from a different continent, complicating deliveries and returns. (I swear I'm not stupid). Plus side of the 850w unit is not only does it have 100w more but it also is in stock...

Will also be ordering the EKWB 360mm AIO and some decent thermal paste as I can't bring myself through the torture of trying to mount the EVO 212 cooler ever again.

 

[Quanticriver]

Thank you! Spoke to another techy friend of mine and said PSU as well so seems ever more likely. Also with the UPS going haywire presumably it's all linked together.

Turns out my current PSU is a corsair as well, not cooler master...it's a Corsair VS550, Semi modular. Had a look at Corsair's site, I've a feeling it's pretty old (had it laying around after another 1500w PSU failed years ago in an old build) so maybe it doesn't have the protection build in.

This may be a stupid question but what is the difference between these 2 PSU apart from 100w?

https://www.mwave.com.au/product/co...2-gold-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-ac14754

https://www.mwave.com.au/product/corsair-rm850-850w-80-plus-gold-fully-modular-power-supply-ac25316

Exact same price but the 750w unit has an ''x'' at the end, which through some over-thinking on my own part has led me to believe that this could be an ATX specific unit and the other one something else entirely. If I still lived in civilization I wouldn't care as I could order and send back the next day but here I'm literally ordering from a different continent, complicating deliveries and returns. (I swear I'm not stupid). Plus side of the 850w unit is not only does it have 100w more but it also is in stock...

Will also be ordering the EKWB 360mm AIO and some decent thermal paste as I can't bring myself through the torture of trying to mount the EVO 212 cooler ever again.

I FEEL YOU on the 212, never again

tbh i can't give you solid advice on the difference between the two PSU's, you may want to open a new thread for that one

 

[bas550]

I FEEL YOU on the 212, never again

tbh i can't give you solid advice on the difference between the two PSU's, you may want to open a new thread for that one

I start to get angry just thinking of installing the 212 again, haha. Works fantastic once installed but I just can't stomach that pain again.

Looks like the non X versions of Corsair don't have Japanese capacitors and doesn't have a corsair fan. The last bit I don't care for but seems the japanese capacitors is what is best right now. 750x not in stock so may go for the 650...well within my recommended range for wattage so all good!

Will update when I have all the stuff in...thanks!

 

[bas550]

Hello mate

Have you ran speccy to check your temps? (as you say it might be your thermal protection kicking in and shutting down your pc)

i'd argue that your psu is giving you grief
Any event that causes your pc to just lose power is a big pointer towards your PSU
Also your event viewer only states the power loss, no events leading up to it
It would be best to verify with another PSU, but as you described, there's not too much chance of that happening

Personally i'd order a quality unit that can deal with the voltage spikes (high end corsair/seasonic)
and hope it solves/mediates the issue

So just to update, pc PSU arrived and cooler (silverstone PF360 which was still a B to install...lol), the problem I had went away but now have a different problem after a fresh install, but that's for another thread, as it seems to be a windows install problem rather than anything else!

So thank you, the problem I had was indeed fixed!

 

[Quanticriver]

So just to update, pc PSU arrived and cooler (silverstone PF360 which was still a B to install...lol), the problem I had went away but now have a different problem after a fresh install, but that's for another thread, as it seems to be a windows install problem rather than anything else!

So thank you, the problem I had was indeed fixed!

Good news, thanks for letting us know