I have been experiencing with unexpected restarts of my computer for about a month now. Invariably it happens when I’m gaming, though the only time I use my home PC for any extended period is for gaming. Likewise, it only happens when I’m playing World of Warcraft, but again, I haven’t played anything else since the expansion came out.
The sequence of events is quite simple. One second, everything is fine. The next, the screens go black. Then a second or two later, I get the motherboard logo flashing up as the PC boots up. A short while later, I’m back at the Windows login screen.
Near as I can tell, the system is rebooting on its own. I have no idea why.
I put this system together about three months ago. It ran without a hitch for about 6-7 weeks. Here are the basic components:
All of the internal components were purchased within the last ~4 months; none of them are new or refurbished.
Given it’s watercooled, I naturally did leak-testing with no power to the components during the build. No problems there.
I never got around to overclocking anything. Everything is running at stock speed.
Again, the system ran completely error free for about 7 weeks. Then I got the problem as described: screens go black and the PC reboots. I do not get a blue screen or any sort of error message. Looking at Reliability History, it only reports that that "Windows was not properly shut down."
When the problem initially occurred, I thought it might be a problem with the video card driver, so I tried reinstalling and then switching to an earlier version. I also tried removing the Nvidia drivers and GeForce Experience and doing a clean install. None of that seemed to make a difference.
I also recalled that the problem also seemed to set in a day or so after a Windows update. After reading about the various problems that the Anniversary Update caused, I hunted around for various Windows fixes. None of those seemed to work.
Eventually I read a post that suggested resetting Windows. I tried that and things seemed to work. A few days passed without issue before the unexpected restart occurred again. I reset Windows again.
Over the next week, I ended up doing this a few more times. Sometimes this would buy me a day or so. Sometimes the restart problems would recur within hours.
At this stage, I began wondering if it was a hardware issue. I visually inspected my watercooling loop for leaks without result. I kept a temperature monitor up while I played; it always showed a CPU temp of ~60 Celsius when under load -- pretty much what it always had.
Also, I’d had a previous system that had thermal issues, but those problems always resulted in a Blue Screen error warning me that the system had shutdown to prevent overheating. I have never once gotten a Blue Screen; rather, I get the immediate fade to black as the system reboots.
I'd purposely bought a Corsair PSU because of the reputation for reliability. Using the various calculators, I'd been recommended to get a ~750-800 watts, so I went with the 1000 watt model to be safe. Someone recommended testing the power supply by running a program called OCCT. (It apparently cranks up the CPU and GPUs to stress the PSU.) I did that for an hour, but the program reported no errors.
I downloaded MemTest86 and ran it individually on each of the two RAM sticks. After two passes on each stick, no errors were reported.
I tried changing the electrical power cord on the PC. Eventually got a random reboot..
I tried running the PC plugged directly into the wall instead of the UPS. Eventually got a random reboot.
I tried plugging the PC and UPS into a different outlet. Eventually got a random reboot.
Recently, I wiped the boot drive -- I use the Samsung 950 M.2 drive for Windows stuff and keep applications and data on the Samsung 850 EVO -- and reinstalled Windows 10 from scratch. Initially, this seemed to provide some measure of success. I played for a couple hours the first day without issue, a few hours more on the second day, and then a few hours more on the third. But about 90 minutes into a later session on the third day, I had the same unexpected restart once again.
A friend with some computing expertise had me browse through the Windows Logs of the Events Viewer in Windows. None of what I reported to him struck him as an obvious culprit. He expected that the Applications Log would have been throwing out error messages or warning leading up to the crash, but there wasn't anything like that.
He then suggested that he’d once had weird issues resulting from an out-of-date USB motherboard driver, so he suggested I update every driver I connected with my motherboard. I went to the Asus site and updated all of the following:
I also downloaded and flashed the BIOS to the most recent release.
After completing each of those steps, I started playing again. About 90 minutes later, I got the random reboot yet again.
Any ideas?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sept. 27 update
Tried out a replacement power supply. Different model, but also 1000 watt capacity. After plugging everything in, the random reboot hit a few minutes after I started gaming. I had a temperature monitor up at the time and everything was under 40 Celsius at the time.
At this point. my best guess is that the motherboard. Since that means tearing the whole system apart, I'm not keen on that possibility. But at this point, I can think of little else that it could be.
The sequence of events is quite simple. One second, everything is fine. The next, the screens go black. Then a second or two later, I get the motherboard logo flashing up as the PC boots up. A short while later, I’m back at the Windows login screen.
Near as I can tell, the system is rebooting on its own. I have no idea why.
I put this system together about three months ago. It ran without a hitch for about 6-7 weeks. Here are the basic components:
CPU: Intel Skylake 6700
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Hero
RAM: G-Skill 3600 DDR4 (16 MB; 2 sticks)
GPU: Nvidia 1080 x2 in SLI
PSU: Corsair RMi 1000 watts
HD 1: Samsung 950 Pro M.2
HD 2: Samsung 850 EVO SSD
Monitor 1: Acer Predator x34 (running at 90 Hz)
Monitor 2: Dell U2515H (running at 60 Hz)
Keyboard: Roccat Ryos MK FX
Mouse: Steelseries MMO mouse
Cooling: custom watercooling loop; both GPUs and CPU are water-cooled
UPS: Cyberpower 1500VA (900 watts)
OS: Windows 10 Pro
All of the internal components were purchased within the last ~4 months; none of them are new or refurbished.
Given it’s watercooled, I naturally did leak-testing with no power to the components during the build. No problems there.
I never got around to overclocking anything. Everything is running at stock speed.
Again, the system ran completely error free for about 7 weeks. Then I got the problem as described: screens go black and the PC reboots. I do not get a blue screen or any sort of error message. Looking at Reliability History, it only reports that that "Windows was not properly shut down."
When the problem initially occurred, I thought it might be a problem with the video card driver, so I tried reinstalling and then switching to an earlier version. I also tried removing the Nvidia drivers and GeForce Experience and doing a clean install. None of that seemed to make a difference.
I also recalled that the problem also seemed to set in a day or so after a Windows update. After reading about the various problems that the Anniversary Update caused, I hunted around for various Windows fixes. None of those seemed to work.
Eventually I read a post that suggested resetting Windows. I tried that and things seemed to work. A few days passed without issue before the unexpected restart occurred again. I reset Windows again.
Over the next week, I ended up doing this a few more times. Sometimes this would buy me a day or so. Sometimes the restart problems would recur within hours.
At this stage, I began wondering if it was a hardware issue. I visually inspected my watercooling loop for leaks without result. I kept a temperature monitor up while I played; it always showed a CPU temp of ~60 Celsius when under load -- pretty much what it always had.
Also, I’d had a previous system that had thermal issues, but those problems always resulted in a Blue Screen error warning me that the system had shutdown to prevent overheating. I have never once gotten a Blue Screen; rather, I get the immediate fade to black as the system reboots.
I'd purposely bought a Corsair PSU because of the reputation for reliability. Using the various calculators, I'd been recommended to get a ~750-800 watts, so I went with the 1000 watt model to be safe. Someone recommended testing the power supply by running a program called OCCT. (It apparently cranks up the CPU and GPUs to stress the PSU.) I did that for an hour, but the program reported no errors.
I downloaded MemTest86 and ran it individually on each of the two RAM sticks. After two passes on each stick, no errors were reported.
I tried changing the electrical power cord on the PC. Eventually got a random reboot..
I tried running the PC plugged directly into the wall instead of the UPS. Eventually got a random reboot.
I tried plugging the PC and UPS into a different outlet. Eventually got a random reboot.
Recently, I wiped the boot drive -- I use the Samsung 950 M.2 drive for Windows stuff and keep applications and data on the Samsung 850 EVO -- and reinstalled Windows 10 from scratch. Initially, this seemed to provide some measure of success. I played for a couple hours the first day without issue, a few hours more on the second day, and then a few hours more on the third. But about 90 minutes into a later session on the third day, I had the same unexpected restart once again.
A friend with some computing expertise had me browse through the Windows Logs of the Events Viewer in Windows. None of what I reported to him struck him as an obvious culprit. He expected that the Applications Log would have been throwing out error messages or warning leading up to the crash, but there wasn't anything like that.
He then suggested that he’d once had weird issues resulting from an out-of-date USB motherboard driver, so he suggested I update every driver I connected with my motherboard. I went to the Asus site and updated all of the following:
USB driver
Intel chipset driver
Intel management engine interface
Realtek audio driver
SATA driver
Ethernet driver
I also downloaded and flashed the BIOS to the most recent release.
After completing each of those steps, I started playing again. About 90 minutes later, I got the random reboot yet again.
Any ideas?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sept. 27 update
Tried out a replacement power supply. Different model, but also 1000 watt capacity. After plugging everything in, the random reboot hit a few minutes after I started gaming. I had a temperature monitor up at the time and everything was under 40 Celsius at the time.
At this point. my best guess is that the motherboard. Since that means tearing the whole system apart, I'm not keen on that possibility. But at this point, I can think of little else that it could be.
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