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Many computer restarts [Solved]
-- Thanks a lot for the help everyone, will let the store deal with the problem since it is under warranty. Don't want to void warranty by trying to change the PSU which as pointed seems to be the problem.
Recently my computer just restarts itself if I'm playing a game for more than an hour, sometimes even earlier. First it was dead island, I would just load my character and within 5 minutes my computer would restart but looking into the mater and forcing vysnc I could atleast play for awhile but then these restarts started happening in LA noire and Saints Row 3, usually after an hour. All the games seem to also just randomly crash to desktop if they aren't just restarting the computer for no reason.
I just moved houses so I thought perhaps it had something to do with the electricity output but that still doesn't explain the regular crashes to desktop. I'm not really sure what could be causing the issue, my best guess right now is some auto-turnoff function of my GPU at certain temperatures but I haven't noticed the GPU going over 60-70 degrees in the time a usual crash happens.
To rule out electricity fluctuation, which happens quite a bit in the new house I do have a UPS but it has never kicked in all these situations.
Anyone have an idea as to what the problem may be?
Edit: Have run memtest86+ for 12 hours and 10 passes with no errors.
Ran prime 95 belnded tortute test for 3 hours, no errors or warning. Max temp was 86 degrees, idle temperature is 40-50.
Comments
Am sorry, the computer actually resets like you hit the reset button, or you are just always crashing to the desktop?
if it only resets the computer during games, then it could be a power issues with your gpu, like your gfx card isnt getting enough juice or it maybe as simple as a faulty reset button. Could be contact issues with the cpu too, wow, too many things.
Both happen, either the computer will just restart or the application will encounter an error and needs to be closed.
That did happen to one of my rigs when it start to overheat, but your temps are good. Maybe a new power supply will do it. Can you write down the error code (is it windows error codes)?
Its a new rig with a new powersupply, less than 2 months since I got it. Also no error codes, when it crashes to desktop it just says application encounted an error and needs to close and if there is a restart the error code box never pops up.
Sounds like you have a faulty PSU. Even without an error code or log being written, what you're describing is more than likely the GPU not getting a consistent level of juice and is shutting itself down, thus the drop to desktop...
Most likely cause first of all is driver. Uninstall the old gpu driver correctly and run a cleaner such as CCleaner for the registry and then install a new driver after the restart.
If that does not work it could be your gpu is over heating. Lastly it could be your power supply is not putting out the correct power. What video card do you own? After these steps are verified to be okay then the next step is to look at your bios settings or other applications running in the background, do you overclock, do you run background programs. You have to check your services out.
What's your CPU temp?
My first two guesses would be a temp somewhere (could be more than just GPU - your CPU and motherboard can also overheat and give similar indications), or malfunctioning power supply as well.
Can always try running with the side of the case off and a desk fan pointed straight in at the computer - if it's a temp issue, that should let you run until you can figure out which temp it is. And if it's not a temp issue, that lets you know pretty well that it's just a power supply issue (unless of course it's a power supply temp issue, which is possible if it's malfunctioning).
Also, make sure all the dusty bunnies are cleaned out of the inside of your case.
The crappy part about bad power supplies - doesn't matter how old they are, if they are bad they are bad. Some can last for years and then crap out, others crap out after a few hours, but once they crap out, it's really bad news, and they have the nasty tendancy to blow up multiple parts inside your computer with them: memory is especially sensitive and almost always dies with a power supply, motherboards commonly blow, video cards often die as well.
It's not something you want to mess around with if your certain it's not a temp, even if the computer seems to be acting normally otherwise.
I'll try grabbing a friend's powersupply tomorrow and see if that helps, otherwise will start monitoring temeratures for other parts and report back as soon as i can.
EDIT: Could anyone recommend a temperature monitoring software, only ever used GPU-Z for my graphics card.
What hardware do you have, exactly? And in particular, I'd like to see the exact brand name and model of the power supply.
If you have an EVGA GPU, you could always use EVGA Precision. It also allows you to manually adjust the fan speed quickly, just before loading up a graphics intensive game to keep temps much lower. And there is an on-screen option for monitoring while playing, and many others.
Many of todays games require manual tuning of the fan, or you'll end up overheating and killing your GPU, unless it has a built-in overheating sensor. You'll know if you ever hear your GPU fan suddenly ramp up to 100% and blast a mass of air for a few secs. Its pretty loud and hard to miss. {sometimes I've forgotten to change my fan speed before gaming and this happens}
OP it would be helpful if you could post your:
-Rig specs (including mobo, any periperhals installed ie sound card if any, PSU, GPU, CPU)
-Your OS
-Last updated drivers, if you could remember.
First of all, update all your drivers, that should eliminate one factor.
That being said, I would rule out power flunctuations because your PSU is actually a power regulator by itself. Any by right power fluncs shouldnt cause your rig to restart. It'll just go dead.
My best bet would be your PC is overheating (albeit not consistently). Try doing some spring cleaning. Vacuum all those dust collecting on fans etc. You can use normal household vacuum cleaner. I've done to mine. Have a small brush standing by, or a small painting brush will do. No need to remove heat sinks, but you can if you want remember to apply a fresh thin layer of heat paste when re-installing it.
Antec high current gamer 520w PSU
I5 2500k Stock speeds
Gskill ripjaws 8gb 1600
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 OC (830 instead of 810, factory OC)
Asus p8p67 motherboard
Barrcauda 1TB HD
Nothing obviously bad there.
Try running memtest86+ and see if it finds anything wrong with your memory.
What case are you using?
Will do right away and an Antec three hundred.
Except you missed the part where he said "Antec high current gamer 520w PSU."
OP you are using a 520w PSU to power a system that is peaking nearly 550 watts!
The mobo and i5 2500k alone draws 380-400 watts, the lower end being that you have the asus auto oc'ing capabilities turned off, if it is on and the system senses it needs more power it will auto OC and you combine a 400 watt consumption.
Add in the GTX 560 OC and it draws 170 watts to 190 watts depending on model and factory OC, your 560 is in the top end of the power consumption, I would say near 180-185 watts TDP.
Add this all up and hard drives and fans and anything else and you are well near 550+ at full load on your system.
You will need a 600-650 watt PSU to be on the safer side for stability. I recommend 650 watts.
You are wildly wrong. The processor has a TDP of 95 W.
http://ark.intel.com/products/52210/Intel-Core-i5-2500K-Processor-(6M-Cache-3_30-GHz)
Motherboards use in the tens of watts, not hundreds, unless you count the stuff that is plugged into them.
The only way that power supply would struggle with that system is if something is defective.
Except you missed the part where he said "Antec high current gamer 520w PSU."
OP you are using a 520w PSU to power a system that is peaking nearly 550 watts!
The mobo and i5 2500k alone draws 380-400 watts, the lower end being that you have the asus auto oc'ing capabilities turned off, if it is on and the system senses it needs more power it will auto OC and you combine a 400 watt consumption.
Add in the GTX 560 OC and it draws 170 watts to 190 watts depending on model and factory OC, your 560 is in the top end of the power consumption, I would say near 180-185 watts TDP.
Add this all up and hard drives and fans and anything else and you are well near 550+ at full load on your system.
You will need a 600-650 watt PSU to be on the safer side for stability. I recommend 650 watts.
Quiz is right, these numbers are off.
nVidia even recommends, for 560, a power supply of 450W.
http://www.geforce.com/Hardware/GPUs/geforce-gtx-560/specifications
520W is plenty for this system, even with the mild video card OC, but I wouldn't be aggressively over clocking anything. The i5 is 95W peak, the motherboard + everything else in the system (hard drives, optical drives, fans, sound card, whatever else) is maybe 100W tops with everything spinning at the same time. A high power high performance fan that sounds like a jet turbine would struggle to use 10W by itself. Most hard drives are under 10W as well. SSD's are down around 2W. Even liquid cooling, an very high pressure, high flow pump is around 35W (and most systems like Antec or Corsair use low power pump, I'd be surprised if it was even 10W). You'd have to add a lot of crap inside that case to get over 100W, let alone close to 400W.
The TDP of a 560 stock is 150 (the Ti edition is 170) - even though nVIdia artificially floats these numbers low and there is a small OC on the video card, your still handily within a 520W power supply, even using your estimate of 180-185 (which could well be right given nVidia's crappy TDP reporting).
That, and the fact that the times that everything is under full load all at once are pretty slim - video games are good at loading your GPU, but bad at loading the CPU. Benchmarks usually load one or the other at a time, rarely both at the same time.
Even though that's a "big enough" power supply and it's a decent make and model, it doesn't preclude the fact that it could still be going bad. There's always a chance - higher quality just significantly lowers that chance.
Gonna suggest a memtest86+ run. It's easy to do and bad memory can cause the weirdest problems so it's a good test to run first. You can also try disabling the XMP memory profile in the bios to run the memory at JEDEC standards which is a lot easier on it.
My buddy has had to RMA his memory for his i5 twice now, seems to be lower quality control these days
Just an update, ran memtest86+ for about 12 hours and 10 passes and found no errors. Just downloaded prime95 and will stress CPU and see if overheating is occuring there.
After that I will monitor GPU and CPU tempratures while playing saints row 2 for about 2 hours.
On the matter of if its a bad powersupply, why would there also be constant crash to desktops? Wouldn't it always just restart and also not just in games?
As of right now I believe what the problem is that, when the heater turns on in my house it takes as enormous amount of energy and as such there is some fluctuation caused and my UPS generally just beeps but maybe the graphics card during that fluctuation gets very little juice and it shuts down? Do keep in mind that I have played saints row 3 when these fluctuations happen, so it doesn't happen every time.
My bet is on a bad PSU.
I had one go bad and caused some really strange stuff to happen that was hard to pin down the cause. After much "problem solving" by me lol I replaced the PSU and everything worked correctly.
Could be you just got a bad one, it does happen even with better name brand products. Seems like your GPU isnt getting the juice it needs. The 520w should be enuff with a fully functioning PSU, but one thats not running up to snuff would cause that problem.
Just my thoughts. People with more knowledge than me might can give you some more insight.
If your system worked well before the house move and you haven't changed any drivers, I would try re-seating all your components. Remove and re-insert them, possibly clean the contacts.
If you've updated any drivers, try reverting to the older ones.
If it was just restarts, overheating would be what I'd consider a top candidate, but I've never seen an overheating GPU or CPU cause this exact symptom set. I've overheat CPUs before, and it has always just crashed the machine, not caused app crashes, and as for the GPU, if that was overheating, you'd almost certainly see artifacting on the screen (funny squares would start appearing everywhere, like pixelated snow), and the crashing would be limited to the graphics driver and the operating system (which would bugcheck when the driver stopped responding).
I just don't think overheating fits here. Memory is a possible candidate, and even a pretty decent one, but if it was memory, at least some of the restarts should be accompanied by blue screens with the 0x00000050 error (PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA). OP, do you by chance have any recently created files in C:WindowsMinidump?
If so, try viewing them with this program: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html
It's nowhere near as good as the Windows debugger, but it's fast and easy to use, and it'll at least let you see what the error is. I'd also second the recommendation for a run with Memtest86+
As I said, my personal bet would be against memory, but it's entirely possible, and an easy suspect to confirm or eliminate.
As for what I would bet on, I'll be honest, I expected when Quizzical asks for the PSU, it was going to be some complete POS. Instead, it's quite a good PSU, but just the same, the symptoms strike me as being a perfect fit with a bad PSU starving the CPU for power. That would explain the random nature of the failures (sometimes restarts, sometimes app crashes), as well as being consistent with what we don't see (0x50 bugchecks, graphical artifacting, hung GPU driver messages, etc).
If it passes memtest 10 times, there's a 98% chance your memory is good. Memtest isn't foolproof, but it's pretty good at picking up errors.
Post your temps and results when stressing, and hopefully we'll get more information.
A bad PSU can cause all sorts of symptoms - from just apps crashing to BSODs to restarts to full blown random power downs. It just depends on how it's failing and which component at the time is most affected. They are hands down some of the most difficult problems to pin down, because the PSU itself isn't what is crashing, it's other components crashing because of the bad PSU, which masks the problem.
How do you have your memory positioned? I'm assuming you are using 2x 4GB sticks. Typically they would be placed in the A1 and B1 slots (both black) and if they are try running the system with them put into the A1 and A2. There have been quite a few issues with memory on these boards where it's actually a problem with the motherboard itself.
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