Question PC will completely shut down under load randomly

[Phaethar]

Hey all,

First time poster here, have a very weird issue I'm trying to figure out. My PC, which has been running solid since it's last overhaul last spring, has suddenly started shutting down suddenly while gaming. It will run all day just fine, but if I'm playing something that putting load on the system, it's like someone pulled the plug. No crash, no blue screen, etc. Screen go black, and lights shut off, it's completely off. After 5 or so seconds, it powers back on and boots up fresh.

My first thought was power supply. It was under warranty still, so I contacted Corsair about it and they replaced it. Seemed good for a while, but while playing tonight it's shut down 3-4 times over a couple hours.

Relevant system specs:
Intel i9-10900K CPU
Asus Maximus XII Hero
32GB G-Skill Memory
Asus 2080Ti Strix
Corsair HX1000i PS (brand new)
Sound Blaster AE-5 Plus
Corsair H115i Platinum AIO
Win10 Pro

Most of the parts in it are less than a year old, and the PS is barely a week old, but sadly did not fix this issue.

I did have the CPU OC'd to 5.1 GHz, but I've set it back to stock to see if it helped. Again, no luck. I updated the BIOS on the mainboard over the weekend while I was setting the CPU speed back down, just in case it was related to that. But again, this combo had been running totally solid for around 8 months prior to this.

I'm honestly at a bit of a loss as to what to try next. It's just going down so quick and suddenly, there are no logs or anything to check. Windows just complains that the previous shutdown was unexpected, which makes sense. The system is connected to an APC UPS. Nothing is actually losing power (monitors are still on, modem stays on, etc) so I don't think it's the UPS.

I'm thinking it's likely related to the motherboard, but I don't have any way of testing that other than replacing it. I may try and see if Asus will do an advance RMA for it once their chat is available tomorrow.

Any other thoughts on what else could be going on?

 

[white.a.drew]

Hey all,

First time poster here, have a very weird issue I'm trying to figure out. My PC, which has been running solid since it's last overhaul last spring, has suddenly started shutting down suddenly while gaming. It will run all day just fine, but if I'm playing something that putting load on the system, it's like someone pulled the plug. No crash, no blue screen, etc. Screen go black, and lights shut off, it's completely off. After 5 or so seconds, it powers back on and boots up fresh.

My first thought was power supply. It was under warranty still, so I contacted Corsair about it and they replaced it. Seemed good for a while, but while playing tonight it's shut down 3-4 times over a couple hours.

Relevant system specs:
Intel i9-10900K CPU
Asus Maximus XII Hero
32GB G-Skill Memory
Asus 2080Ti Strix
Corsair HX1000i PS (brand new)
Sound Blaster AE-5 Plus
Corsair H115i Platinum AIO
Win10 Pro

Most of the parts in it are less than a year old, and the PS is barely a week old, but sadly did not fix this issue.

I did have the CPU OC'd to 5.1 GHz, but I've set it back to stock to see if it helped. Again, no luck. I updated the BIOS on the mainboard over the weekend while I was setting the CPU speed back down, just in case it was related to that. But again, this combo had been running totally solid for around 8 months prior to this.

I'm honestly at a bit of a loss as to what to try next. It's just going down so quick and suddenly, there are no logs or anything to check. Windows just complains that the previous shutdown was unexpected, which makes sense. The system is connected to an APC UPS. Nothing is actually losing power (monitors are still on, modem stays on, etc) so I don't think it's the UPS.

I'm thinking it's likely related to the motherboard, but I don't have any way of testing that other than replacing it. I may try and see if Asus will do an advance RMA for it once their chat is available tomorrow.

Any other thoughts on what else could be going on?

Have you tried running memtest86?

 

[Phaethar]

Have you tried running memtest86?

I ran the full Windows memory diagnostic on boot, which appears to be pretty similar. Took a couple hours, but no issues found with that.

 

[white.a.drew]

I ran the full Windows memory diagnostic on boot, which appears to be pretty similar. Took a couple hours, but no issues found with that.

Okay... Highly doubt it would be but can try restoring windows a little...
Open cmd as admin amd run this command if you can
Sfc /scannow

 

[white.a.drew]

I ran the full Windows memory diagnostic on boot, which appears to be pretty similar. Took a couple hours, but no issues found with that.

Fix Windows - right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter


Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth
and press enter

 

[Karadjgne]

Which UPS, and which plugs are actually used? Usually only a couple are actually breakered and connected to battery backup, the rest are non-battery backup, just voltage regulated. So it's entirely possible for the pc to shutdown instantly, if it's on the battery output outlet and the monitors not be affected if they are plugged into regulated power.

Atx standards say 16ms of hold up time for a psu , and most psus are thereabouts, but that's not much time really for a power interrupt. If you have a weak breaker, bad battery, faulty ups etc it can easily interupt power for longer than @ 16ms, or even not have enough DC voltage in the battery to convert to 120/240v outputs.

So the pc shuts off, ups resets, and bios is set to auto-restart after power failure.

 

[Phaethar]

Fix Windows - right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter

Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth
and press enter

SFC didn't find any issues, and I'd be pretty surprised if a corrupted system file could cause this.

PS C:\Windows\system32> SFC /scannow

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

 

[Phaethar]

Which UPS, and which plugs are actually used? Usually only a couple are actually breakered and connected to battery backup, the rest are non-battery backup, just voltage regulated. So it's entirely possible for the pc to shutdown instantly, if it's on the battery output outlet and the monitors not be affected if they are plugged into regulated power.

Atx standards say 16ms of hold up time for a psu , and most psus are thereabouts, but that's not much time really for a power interrupt. If you have a weak breaker, bad battery, faulty ups etc it can easily interupt power for longer than @ 16ms, or even not have enough DC voltage in the battery to convert to 120/240v outputs.

So the pc shuts off, ups resets, and bios is set to auto-restart after power failure.

That's a good point. Like most UPS models, this one (APC Back-Ups Pro 1500 S) has a few plugs that use the battery, and a few that are surge only. The PC, monitors, and modem are all battery protected. A few other accessories are surge only. I've made a point to check to see if anything else loses power when the PC does, and they are not. Modem stays on, power indicator stays lit on the displays. But, that's not to say there isn't something going on with the plug the PC is plugged into. I can try plugging it directly into the wall for a bit, see if that helps.

 

[Phaethar]

Just a quick follow up: I did move the PC power cord directly to the wall instead of going to the UPS. While booting back up I checked the BIOS, and found that the "Power after AC loss" is set to "power off", not last state. So if it was just losing power, it should be staying off. The fact that it's coming back up on it's own after going dark would indicate some sort of hardware issue to me.

 

[Karadjgne]

Ah. That's a BR model. It doesn't have AVR which is auto voltage regulation, it's the old style, cheaper model. Still very respectable, IF you have pretty stable voltages.

Meaning if your household power to that outlet dips even momentarily below @ 100v, your power supply will shut down. The UPS will protect against spikes (surges) or power off, but may or may not kick in the battery to replace a temporary low voltage. Like a brown-out situation when lights temporarily dim when the air conditioning kicks on.

It's entirely possible there's exactly nothing wrong with your pc, but there's a weak link in a plug somewhere in that circuit and it's causing issues with voltage supply.

If plugging directly into the wall doesn't change anything, you can eliminate the ups as an issue. After that, I'd grab a decent extension cord and plug the pc into a bathroom or dining room circuit, as they will be not only a different circuit, but a full 20A wired circuit, not the standard 15A.

If that changes nothing, it's your pc. Somehow. If that fixes the issue, call an electrician to come check the wiring in the breaker box and circuit for that outlet.

 

[Phaethar]

Right on, we'll see if running directly to the wall changes anything.

And not that it matters too much, but the UPS should support AVR. I always make sure the UPS I run on a PC supports that. The model number for this on is the BR1500MS, which should support AVR:

https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/prod...B-Charging-Ports-AVR-LCD-interface/P-BR1500MS

We'll see what happens. I'm still contemplating whether I should try and pick up a replacement board from Microcenter or not tomorrow, just in case.

 

[Phaethar]

Quick updates, as whatever is happening seems to be getting worse.

I've been trying to reproduce the shut down issue outside of World of Warcraft, which is the only place I see this happen.I ran through tons of stress test and 3dmark loops last night, all rock solid. Even WoW can be fine for extended periods, but trying to raid last night triggered at least 4 shutdowns.

Also still unsure if something else isn't going on besides power. I've been trying to get a full memtest loop to finish, but it just won't. I'll start it up, and within about 15 seconds Windows becomes unresponsive. Doesn't shut down, and I'll still have a cursor, but that's about it. Everything else disappears off the screen and I have to do a hard reboot.

Tried the WIndows memory diagnostic again last night too. Set it to run before heading to bed, and came down this morning to find out that it had locked up there too. No errors detected, just locked up. Tried turning down memory speeds from the XMP profile to just DDR4-2133, but still no luck. Memtest still causes everything to hang (but not power down).

So now I have an issue where playing 1 game causes my PC to shut down, but I can't reproduce outside of that. Memory tests fail to run, but don't actually find any errors with the memory. It's clearly having an issue somewhere. So do I try and chase down a PSU? Do I have bad memory? A bad memory controller? All of these issues appear to be snowballing all of a sudden.

 

[Snieke720]

Quick updates, as whatever is happening seems to be getting worse.

I've been trying to reproduce the shut down issue outside of World of Warcraft, which is the only place I see this happen.I ran through tons of stress test and 3dmark loops last night, all rock solid. Even WoW can be fine for extended periods, but trying to raid last night triggered at least 4 shutdowns.

Also still unsure if something else isn't going on besides power. I've been trying to get a full memtest loop to finish, but it just won't. I'll start it up, and within about 15 seconds Windows becomes unresponsive. Doesn't shut down, and I'll still have a cursor, but that's about it. Everything else disappears off the screen and I have to do a hard reboot.

Tried the WIndows memory diagnostic again last night too. Set it to run before heading to bed, and came down this morning to find out that it had locked up there too. No errors detected, just locked up. Tried turning down memory speeds from the XMP profile to just DDR4-2133, but still no luck. Memtest still causes everything to hang (but not power down).

So now I have an issue where playing 1 game causes my PC to shut down, but I can't reproduce outside of that. Memory tests fail to run, but don't actually find any errors with the memory. It's clearly having an issue somewhere. So do I try and chase down a PSU? Do I have bad memory? A bad memory controller? All of these issues appear to be snowballing all of a sudden.

I really hope that you found a solution I'm having the same issue please help me out almost the same pc just lower grade hardware