Random reboot of a five-year old system, PSU possible culprit?

[bastille77]

Lately I've been seeing my computer randomly restarting for no apparent reason. My PC was built about five years ago and presently consists of these parts, some of which, such as the Asus Geforce GTX 1080 Strix, are very recent upgrades.

The most recent random reboot occurred tonight when I tried to open the HWMonitor application to check temperatures after roughly a five-hour gaming session of Witcher 3. I had already exited the game when the system abruptly rebooted.

Another time when it randomly rebooted itself was a few months back. As far as I can remember it happened in the middle of a coding session when the system was under very light load.

For each of these restarts there was neither error message nor blue screen; the system merely reboots as if I've issued a normal reboot command.

Since I highly doubt the restarts are caused by overheating (my CPU and GPU temps are normal even under load), could the culprit be my Cooler Master PSU? After all, the thing has been working for five years without problems until now. I've read in similar threads which claim that the symptoms akin to mine are typically indicative of a failing PSU.

 

[Dunlop0078]

Well I would try to get a cpu and gpu temp reading just to be sure, but since it occurs at light loads I would agree that it is likely not temps. I would look through event viewer and see if you can find any errors logged in there that correspond to the restart, they may give you a clue. Is your OS five years old as well? It could be having issues, again event viewer might show that. I would say the power supply or some kind of problem with the OS are the most likely issues, I wouldn't rule out the motherboard however considering its 5 years old as well.

 

[rush21hit]

Once, one of my PC had the same problem. Not just restart either. It randomly shutdown for no reason.

The culprit turns out; was the power cable. Sounds silly? Well, I tried replacing and try out components from other PC. Starting from PSU to motherboard. Even disk.

 

[bastille77]

Well I would try to get a cpu and gpu temp reading just to be sure, but since it occurs at light loads I would agree that it is likely not temps. I would look through event viewer and see if you can find any errors logged in there that correspond to the restart, they may give you a clue. Is your OS five years old as well? It could be having issues, again event viewer might show that. I would say the power supply or some kind of problem with the OS are the most likely issues, I wouldn't rule out the motherboard however considering its 5 years old as well.

The CPU and GPU temps top off at around 70 and 75 respectively under full load.

I did a fresh installation of Windows 10 about one month ago so software-wise it's pretty clean as well.

Checked the event log at the time of the abrupt reboot last night and unfortunately there was nothing helpful there, just something along the lines of "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

Once, one of my PC had the same problem. Not just restart either. It randomly shutdown for no reason.

The culprit turns out; was the power cable. Sounds silly? Well, I tried replacing and try out components from other PC. Starting from PSU to motherboard. Even disk.

You know what, it might just be the power cable in my case too. As a matter of fact I lost the original power cable of my Cooler Master PSU about three years ago and had been using what looks to be like a cheap replacement. I'm going to get a new cable and see if it will solve the issue.

 

[bono_john]

It could be. Is it doing a cold boot(complete powerdown and restart) or warm boot?(just restarts, no power down, fan is running the whole time, case light is on)

 

[Bob DeFranco]

I was having similar problems (you may have read my message string), with random crashes, BSODs and reboots. I replaced the PSU, but the problems continued. Finally, given that the system was 8 years old, I replaced the MOBO and the CPU. Now, everything is running smoothly. No crashes or reboots. Was it a bad component on the board? Outdated BIOS? Gremlins? Don't know, but so far, so good.

 

[bastille77]

It could be. Is it doing a cold boot(complete powerdown and restart) or warm boot?(just restarts, no power down, fan is running the whole time, case light is on)

Hmm that I didn't notice unfortunately. According to the Windows event logs it seems to be an "unexpected shutdown."

On another note, I bought a new power cable today. Will continue to monitor the PC to see if the issue still persists or not.

I was having similar problems (you may have read my message string), with random crashes, BSODs and reboots. I replaced the PSU, but the problems continued. Finally, given that the system was 8 years old, I replaced the MOBO and the CPU. Now, everything is running smoothly. No crashes or reboots. Was it a bad component on the board? Outdated BIOS? Gremlins? Don't know, but so far, so good.

At this stage I'm also not certain which faulty component(s) is causing the reboots. I suspect it's a power-related issue, but it could very well be something else.

I'm reluctant to change the mobo and CPU until I've established beyond any reasonable doubt that they are the culprits, considering that I'm still getting a fair bit of juice out of my OC'ed i5-2500K at the moment.