- May 19, 2013
- 2
- 0
- 10,510
I know there are 1,000,000 post similar to this, but as causes greatly vary and computers can be hugely different, I figured I ought to make my own post; the symptoms other people have also vary from what I'm getting. Also I apologize for writing out such a loooong post, but I just want to get in all the details.
So to address the problem:
My computer instantly shuts down, seemingly, when I put it "under load". I put that in quotes because the shut downs really are not random (mostly) and I can pretty much replicate them by doing certain functions; certain games I play, notably Red Orchestra 2 will pretty much cause an insta-shutdown while the damn game is just loading. Others, like Skyrim (and on one occasion thus far LoTRO) allowed me to get ingame and play for perhaps 15 minutes-ish before shutdown. As I briefly noted before, its only when I put it under some sort of load (i.e. I can generally idle on the desktop or browse the web with no problems, and in fact my rig runs fantastically... save for the shutdowns, of course) HOWEVER, that's not to say I haven't had it shutdown while just browsing the web (though, I've half-noted that this is when I have a lot of tabs open on chrome, and/or some other program running .. so I guess you could say its "sort of under load". Also for the first, maybe, two weeks of having my new computer, this never happened once; it's only been in the past week or so that I've been getting the shutdowns.
An Interesting fact to point out (although, most likely just coincidental):
This rig I'm using is a brand new homebuild. My previous computer (AMD cpu, Nvidia GTX550Ti, Thermaltake 600w psu, 4gb RAM), which I've had for years now just recently started having THE SAME PROBLEM, albeit my old computers problem was less replicate-able/more random. But since it was already a pretty aged rig I decided to just build a new one instead of worrying about finding a fix... that is, until my newly built machine started doing the same damn thing. This lead me to think it was my wall sockets in my room (this is something I'd need to ask an electrician, I understand). But only the computer(s) shut down, and nothing else, such as my TV or lights or whatever, shut off. Also I've tried other outlets in my house with no different results. As oddly similar as the two problems are, their causes are probably unrelated.
PLEASE NOTE: The shutdowns are INSTANT. As if someone where to yank the power cord out of the wall. I never get any errors, BSODs, laggy/freezing computer performance. I'll be running along just fine and then BLACK! All lights and displays off. Then after a few seconds, it will restart itself. (my old rig wouldn't restart itself and sometimes id have to wait a while till i could turn it back on. So I'm quite certain that my old computers problem was that the year-old Thermaltake PSU was crapping out on me).
My Build: (and ya, ya, its a total "enthusiast's" build; I had a... little surplus of cash and thought "what the hell". :lol:
Asus P9X79 Deluxe
Core i-7 3930k
16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM
Samsung 840 Pro SSD
WD Black 1TB HDD
EVGA GTX Titan Superclocked
Corsair H80i CPU cooler
Corsair HX750 PSU
and an LG BluRay player.
So here's what I've done/what I've been thinking:
HEAT. Overheating is the first thing anyone says/thinks about in a situation such as this. But I'm quite sure heat's not the perpetrator here; my case has quite a few fans first of all, and whether I check in HWmonitor, CoreTemp, or in the BIOS my temps are minimal, usually ranging in the 30's or maybe 40's Celsius. My GPU doesn't even typically hit (or go past i suppose) 75C under most loads. This thing is pretty well cooled.
MEMORY. I've tried my DIMMS individually to no avail. I've run window's built-in memory tester AND run memtest86 for a good while with all passes, no errors.
DRIVES. I've tried to run games/programs individually off of either one of my drives to see if one of them was the culprit. Same result.
Like I said before, I get no error messages or BSODs, nor do I find any crash dumps from running WhoCrashed.exe
(Oh and also I'm not doing any sort of OC'ing.. asides, I guess, from my video card which is manufactured that way by EVGA)
To me, my best thought was that my PSU was crumping whenever I started running something more power-consuming; My problem seemed very symptomatic of this. Also this is what other people with similar problems were finding/being told. (which is disappointing because its only several weeks old and its one of Corsairs higher quality models, but hey, i suppose it would be my luck to get a faulty one).
But then I figured I ought to distinctly test my CPU and GPU...
To my utter surprise, I was able to run 2 straight FurMark 1080 Benchmark tests in a row with no shutdown! To me, that ruled out my Video Card as being the problem. But wait, surely FurMark's test would require some good power draw...
So then I ran two CPU stressers: Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool and Prime95. When I run IPDT, it starts up, passes the first set of tests, but when it comes to the "8 Load Test" (or something... I cant remember the exact name), BAM! Computer Off. When I run Prime95, I hit "Start Test" (or whatever) aaand BAM! Computer Off. So now I'm thinking, "cool, I've got a bum CPU". But at the same time, I feel that maybe it IS my PSU afterall. I mean, if it was CPU/MOBO failure I feel like my computer wouldn't run as well as it does even while not under load. That, or I'd be getting some kinda error/BSOD. (Oh, and its probably worth mentioning that I have my little Mobo speaker in and I ALWAYS get that 1 short wonderful POST success beep). So symptomatically speaking I'd say PSU... But due to the failure seemingly always during some sort of CPU exertion, I'd say CPU. Good lord, I just don't know
PS. I'll admit I like to think I know a lot about this stuff, but really... I iz total nub and fairly new to the game (this is my 1st TomsHardware post
) So I would NOT be surprised if some of my facts/thinking is off; please let me know.
I appreciate anyone with the patience to read this and even more so anyone who has a thought on the matter. I'd like to hear which you guys, (the knowledgeable experts lol), think. And let me know if I've left out any important info.
PPS. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong category.
Thanks again guys,
Hip Albatross
So to address the problem:
My computer instantly shuts down, seemingly, when I put it "under load". I put that in quotes because the shut downs really are not random (mostly) and I can pretty much replicate them by doing certain functions; certain games I play, notably Red Orchestra 2 will pretty much cause an insta-shutdown while the damn game is just loading. Others, like Skyrim (and on one occasion thus far LoTRO) allowed me to get ingame and play for perhaps 15 minutes-ish before shutdown. As I briefly noted before, its only when I put it under some sort of load (i.e. I can generally idle on the desktop or browse the web with no problems, and in fact my rig runs fantastically... save for the shutdowns, of course) HOWEVER, that's not to say I haven't had it shutdown while just browsing the web (though, I've half-noted that this is when I have a lot of tabs open on chrome, and/or some other program running .. so I guess you could say its "sort of under load". Also for the first, maybe, two weeks of having my new computer, this never happened once; it's only been in the past week or so that I've been getting the shutdowns.
An Interesting fact to point out (although, most likely just coincidental):
This rig I'm using is a brand new homebuild. My previous computer (AMD cpu, Nvidia GTX550Ti, Thermaltake 600w psu, 4gb RAM), which I've had for years now just recently started having THE SAME PROBLEM, albeit my old computers problem was less replicate-able/more random. But since it was already a pretty aged rig I decided to just build a new one instead of worrying about finding a fix... that is, until my newly built machine started doing the same damn thing. This lead me to think it was my wall sockets in my room (this is something I'd need to ask an electrician, I understand). But only the computer(s) shut down, and nothing else, such as my TV or lights or whatever, shut off. Also I've tried other outlets in my house with no different results. As oddly similar as the two problems are, their causes are probably unrelated.
PLEASE NOTE: The shutdowns are INSTANT. As if someone where to yank the power cord out of the wall. I never get any errors, BSODs, laggy/freezing computer performance. I'll be running along just fine and then BLACK! All lights and displays off. Then after a few seconds, it will restart itself. (my old rig wouldn't restart itself and sometimes id have to wait a while till i could turn it back on. So I'm quite certain that my old computers problem was that the year-old Thermaltake PSU was crapping out on me).
My Build: (and ya, ya, its a total "enthusiast's" build; I had a... little surplus of cash and thought "what the hell". :lol:
Asus P9X79 Deluxe
Core i-7 3930k
16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM
Samsung 840 Pro SSD
WD Black 1TB HDD
EVGA GTX Titan Superclocked
Corsair H80i CPU cooler
Corsair HX750 PSU
and an LG BluRay player.
So here's what I've done/what I've been thinking:
HEAT. Overheating is the first thing anyone says/thinks about in a situation such as this. But I'm quite sure heat's not the perpetrator here; my case has quite a few fans first of all, and whether I check in HWmonitor, CoreTemp, or in the BIOS my temps are minimal, usually ranging in the 30's or maybe 40's Celsius. My GPU doesn't even typically hit (or go past i suppose) 75C under most loads. This thing is pretty well cooled.
MEMORY. I've tried my DIMMS individually to no avail. I've run window's built-in memory tester AND run memtest86 for a good while with all passes, no errors.
DRIVES. I've tried to run games/programs individually off of either one of my drives to see if one of them was the culprit. Same result.
Like I said before, I get no error messages or BSODs, nor do I find any crash dumps from running WhoCrashed.exe
(Oh and also I'm not doing any sort of OC'ing.. asides, I guess, from my video card which is manufactured that way by EVGA)
To me, my best thought was that my PSU was crumping whenever I started running something more power-consuming; My problem seemed very symptomatic of this. Also this is what other people with similar problems were finding/being told. (which is disappointing because its only several weeks old and its one of Corsairs higher quality models, but hey, i suppose it would be my luck to get a faulty one).
But then I figured I ought to distinctly test my CPU and GPU...
To my utter surprise, I was able to run 2 straight FurMark 1080 Benchmark tests in a row with no shutdown! To me, that ruled out my Video Card as being the problem. But wait, surely FurMark's test would require some good power draw...
So then I ran two CPU stressers: Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool and Prime95. When I run IPDT, it starts up, passes the first set of tests, but when it comes to the "8 Load Test" (or something... I cant remember the exact name), BAM! Computer Off. When I run Prime95, I hit "Start Test" (or whatever) aaand BAM! Computer Off. So now I'm thinking, "cool, I've got a bum CPU". But at the same time, I feel that maybe it IS my PSU afterall. I mean, if it was CPU/MOBO failure I feel like my computer wouldn't run as well as it does even while not under load. That, or I'd be getting some kinda error/BSOD. (Oh, and its probably worth mentioning that I have my little Mobo speaker in and I ALWAYS get that 1 short wonderful POST success beep). So symptomatically speaking I'd say PSU... But due to the failure seemingly always during some sort of CPU exertion, I'd say CPU. Good lord, I just don't know
PS. I'll admit I like to think I know a lot about this stuff, but really... I iz total nub and fairly new to the game (this is my 1st TomsHardware post
) So I would NOT be surprised if some of my facts/thinking is off; please let me know. I appreciate anyone with the patience to read this and even more so anyone who has a thought on the matter. I'd like to hear which you guys, (the knowledgeable experts lol), think. And let me know if I've left out any important info.
PPS. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong category.
Thanks again guys,
Hip Albatross
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram