PC Keeps Crashing!

mrFPShorty

Reputable
Jan 19, 2015
3
0
4,510
Computer keeps shutting off randomly which is could be happening due to a number of different reasons. Need help please.
It's a bit of a read but if anyone could help me out I'd greatly appreciate it.

Hello, I'm pretty new to this site so I'm not sure what I'm required to post about my computer in order to get help, nor do I really understand what the problem is with my PC but I'll try to explain it as best as I can.

Basically, my computer randomly shuts off, I'm not sure if it's because of overheating (which I don't think it is because I have 3 fans running, of which is built into the case), faulty psu etc. but my PC shutting off is triggered by things randomly, it can range from playing games like skyrim to simply just opening up firefox. Sometimes the computer doesn't even make it past the Windows screen when it first turns without shutting down. I think it's worth mentioning that I have an Asus H97 Pro which has a anti-surge feature? Most times my computer shuts down it's because of the anti-surge feature so I searched online and found that it's not a very good feature or something? So I ended up disabling it, but my computer still shuts down at random times even without the anti-surge feature.

My theories as to why this is happening could be either of these:

When I first started building the PC, I put the CPU on but then had to take it off again as I needed to fix it resulting in loss of thermal paste or something? I was told that the computer wouldn't even turn on if the thermal paste was messed up for the CPU so I haven't done anything about it yet.

I have 4 hard-drives inside my computer, the 2TB and 120gb SSD that came with the PC build, my harddrive(1TB) out of my old laptop as well as my harddrive from my old external harddrive(500GB). All of the harddrives work in my computer except for the one out of my external harddrive. The harddrive out of my old laptop (Toshiba laptop) still had the files on the harddrive, this includes the windows files which I believe was conflicting with the windows files I have installed on my C: drive (SSD). When I first got the computer up and running I partitioned or raided or whatever it's called, the one where you combine the two drives into one for more space, I did that. Although, quite recently after my computer kept shutting down I did the Launch Startup repair option and it unpartitioned/unraided or w/e the two drives because when I got back on they were seperated, so I backed up the essentials I needed from the laptop drive and formatted it, then reinstalled/restored all the files. I also think it's worth mentioning that majority of the time I do Launch Startup Repair when my PC reboots after crashing it displays an error with the Toshiba logo on the window screen meaning that its trying to launch startup repair from the laptop harddrive?

My last theory is that the PSU(Corsair CTX 600w) is defective, when the Asus anti-surge feature happens, the computer restarts and takes me to this warning(?) displaying a message saying "Asus anti-surge protected against an unstable power supply unit!" and the only thing I can do is press F1 and go to the BIOS menu, which from there I just exit straight away and restart the computer.

But yeah, so my computer is still shutting down randomly and I'm going to try fix the thermal paste thingy for it, so if anyone has any guides that can help me out with doing that, that'd be great. I'll keep the thread updated as to what happens with the thermal paste stuff and if it's fixed it, otherwise I don't know what the problem is, if it is actually the PSU I have a warranty for it so I guess that's fine? Sorry about the long read, kinda didn't know how to summarize my problem and I thought it'd be best to share each bit of detail.

tl;dr: my computer keeps randomly shutting off and I think it might be that I need more thermal paste for my CPU, my PSU is faulty or that my hard drives are messing with the computer.

My PC specs are:

Intel Core i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30Ghz
8 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
Asus H97 Pro
Corsair CTX 600w
Inbuilt Corsair fan (Corsair Case)
2 Coolmaster JetFlo 120 Fans
4x HDDS - 2TB, 1TB (Toshiba HDD from laptop), 1 Segate HDD (from external HDD), 120gb SSD

Windows 7 Ultimate
64-bit Operating System
 
Solution

Neur0nauT

Admirable
It will have to be a process of elimination to find out what is causing the shutdowns. First, you should check your temperatures using this: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

See if your CPU temperature is rising signifcantly after a short period of time. If so, then your judgement may be correct about the Thermal Paste. (You really should have addressed this at the time anyway, that was risky)

If the temperatures appear to be ok on the CPU, then you need check if the GPU temperature is high? If so, make sure that the GPU fan(s) are spinning fully when in use. 970 fans only spin up when required, so you will have to set them to manual fan control to check this.

If all seems ok there, then you will have to think about the PSU and power issues.

In order to do this, it's best to remove all the other drives apart from your OS drive and boot up then see if the problem still exists, if so, you can then move onto checking each RAM module individually. You can test RAM modules with Memtest86: http://www.memtest86.com/

By doing all this, you will hopefully find out what the cause is, and you can then make plans to remove or replace the faulty component.
 
Look on youtube for videos on applying paste.

If that doesnt fix your issue might think about pulling all the HDDs, leave just the SSD, reinstall windows, plug HDDs back in afterwards. Don't combine drives, don't use older drives, dont put slow laptop drives in a nice PC.
 

mrFPShorty

Reputable
Jan 19, 2015
3
0
4,510


Here's my readings on CPUID for the first 2 sections:

http://imgur.com/Q9I63ou

The mainboard seems pretty hot but I'm not sure if the CPU temperatures are hot or stable

Here's another one for the GPU:

http://imgur.com/4dVhEGi


I just took a picture of my BIOS:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2iiiti52w9ffs3l/20150120_161006.jpg?dl=0
 

Neur0nauT

Admirable


I wouldn't take what the mainboard temp is for granted within CPUID-HWM - It can give incorrect results in some cases, as you can see in your BIOS, the temp is nowhere near 115c for the motherboard.

The temperatures look pretty normal to me, however did you let it run for a while to see if there is a fast increase?

Once temperature is ruled out then you need to think about RAM faults or else power issues.

 
Solution

Neur0nauT

Admirable


Again it is CPUID - HWM showing incorrect readings. The V-core should only be checked via the BIOs. It's probably showing correctly in the BIOS.