Question The legend of the un-fixable PC... (Need serious help)

[Meryn24]

This is gonna be a long one...

So I ordered a custom built PC from a computer shop. These were the specs:

INTELI7 11700K PROCESSOR
GIGABYTE Z590 MOTHERBOARD
32GB DDR4 3600MHz GAMING RAM
1TB NVME SOLID STATE DRIVE
MSI NVIDIA RTX3080 10GB GPU
750 WATT 80+ GOLD POWER SUPPLY WINDOWS 10 PRO

Every time I would game on it, the PC would just randomly die and reboot itself. Like it would completely lose power, I would see the RGBs flicker off. And it would come back on. We suspected it to be a PSU issue, so we replaced it with an EVGA 1000w Platinum P5 PSU. It was still dying.

After a week of both the shop and myself trying to figure this out, we decided to replace several of the parts in there, like the motherboard, the ram, the CPU, and the GPU. It was still dying.

So I decided that I don't want this PC anymore. Just give me a new one. So they built me an entirely brand new one. These are the specs:

MSI MPG Sekira 100R Gaming Chassis
Intel i7-11700K Processor
Gigabyte Z590 UD AC Gaming Motherboard
Noctua NH-U9S CPU Tower Cooler
Kingston FURY Beast RGB 32GB (2x16GB) Gaming RAM
Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN570
NVMe Solid State Drive
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 10GB Graphics Card
EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Supernova Power Supply

None of the parts were re-used from the last build. This is an ENTIRELY new PC. They told me they did all the necessary tests to ensure quality. They gamed on it with the game Destiny 2 because that's all I play. They even tried multi display. I brought it home. When I would try to game on it, it would crash every 5 minutes. Sometimes just the game would crash. Sometimes the whole PC would crash. When I took the PC back to the shop and gamed on it there, it was perfectly fine. I played for an hour and a half and it held up well. There were no problems.

So at this point we can pretty much guarantee that it's a hardware problem. Something I have at home is causing the PC to keep crashing. So I tested EVERYTHING. I tried each of my new LG monitors individually with both Display Port and HDMI connections. PC still died. So I tried my old monitor, my old mouse and keyboard, my old power supply cable, I disconnected my headphones just in case that wire was faulty, I used a new Xbox controller, I disconnected the ethernet cable and ran with WiFi, I plugged into 4 different outlets around my apartment. Every time, it kept dying. So obviously it had nothing to do with any of my hardware at home.

So what is the problem? How did it work perfectly fine down at the shop, but not at my apartment? My only suspect is that my apartment's outlets don't contain enough wattage to support a 750w PSU.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[DSzymborski]

Honestly, a PC working elsewhere, but not at your apartment is a pretty troubling sign. Is there a third place you can test it out just to make sure? I think an electrician testing your power might be necessary.

 

[Meryn24]

Honestly, a PC working elsewhere, but not at your apartment is a pretty troubling sign. Is there a third place you can test it out just to make sure? I think an electrician testing your power might be necessary.

I don't have another place to test it, but I will be doing the electrician thing.

However, something else interesting is that I was able to game on it for 2 hours without a crash last night when I ran the game through GeForce Experience. Not sure why it worked. However, when I opened Streamlabs OBS and started recording my gameplay, it would just die every 5 minutes again. Not sure why that is. Do you think the GPU was overworked in that situation and drew too much power from my (supposedly) inefficient outlets and cause a power fluctuation and gave out?

 

[DSzymborski]

I don't have another place to test it, but I will be doing the electrician thing.

However, something else interesting is that I was able to game on it for 2 hours without a crash last night when I ran the game through GeForce Experience. Not sure why it worked. However, when I opened Streamlabs OBS and started recording my gameplay, it would just die every 5 minutes again. Not sure why that is. Do you think the GPU was overworked in that situation and drew too much power from my (supposedly) inefficient outlets and cause a power fluctuation and gave out?

While that behavior would not be inconsistent with an issue, I wouldn't worry about that until your power is looked at. Can you still run the game without OBS?

The working at one place but not another is vexing, because it takes some explanations and eliminates them. For example, if you have a 750 GQ, a 3080 can cause that to crash because it's a cheaper made one that uses a less robust topology which doesn't play well with recent high-power GPUs that tend to be spiky. But that would be a problem anywhere, not just at your place!

 

[SkyNetRising]

Check cpu and gpu temperatures. Use MSI afterburner.
Reduce gpu overclock. You have factory overclocked graphics card.

 

[Meryn24]

Check cpu and gpu temperatures. Use MSI afterburner.
Reduce gpu overclock. You have factory overclocked graphics card.

Temp is not the problem. Not only were they both brand new PCs, but they crashed within minutes of initially turning them on.
And the GPU in the first build was not overclocked and it was still crashing. Doesn't matter if it is overclocked or not. It crashes either way.

 

[Meryn24]

While that behavior would not be inconsistent with an issue, I wouldn't worry about that until your power is looked at. Can you still run the game without OBS?

The working at one place but not another is vexing, because it takes some explanations and eliminates them. For example, if you have a 750 GQ, a 3080 can cause that to crash because it's a cheaper made one that uses a less robust topology which doesn't play well with recent high-power GPUs that tend to be spiky. But that would be a problem anywhere, not just at your place!

The game survives much longer when OBS isn't running. I was able to game for 2 hours before it froze on me. So that's why I feel like OBS gave the GPU just that little push it needed to go over the edge and cause a power spike that my apartment wattage couldn't handle.

 

[Richj444]

I don't have another place to test it, but I will be doing the electrician thing.

However, something else interesting is that I was able to game on it for 2 hours without a crash last night when I ran the game through GeForce Experience. Not sure why it worked. However, when I opened Streamlabs OBS and started recording my gameplay, it would just die every 5 minutes again. Not sure why that is. Do you think the GPU was overworked in that situation and drew too much power from my (supposedly) inefficient outlets and cause a power fluctuation and gave out?

You might consider investing in a decent quality UPS. If it is power fluctuation at your house, that should solve it.

 

[Grobe]

Do you have warranty for that computer ?
this question may not be relevant before an electrician have stated the quality of main voltage being within limitations.
Also : If this turns out being caused by a poor connection (i.e. short dropouts spikes of voltages ) this can lead to damage of equipment and also cause a fire because of heating.

Unless there are serious problems to the main voltage, a PSU shouldn't just die off like this.

What other equipment is connected to same main supply? And is there issues to other electrical equipment in the same house ?