- May 26, 2015
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- 4,510
Hey there Tom's Hardware!
My name's Collin and I've been finding excellent, creative solutions to my clients problems here for over a decade but have regretfully never posted anything. I've never in my life had to use a professional service to troubleshoot a PC before, so I've come to you for help on the first problem that's really stumped me, and of course it would have to be on my own computer.
Couple months ago: Came home to a fried computer, surge protector letting off a high-pitched 'beeeep' and no longer functioning. PSU appeared to have destroyed my motherboard, RAM, and my hard-drive was already failing, so decided to upgrade and got an SSD, basic motherboard, and a new graphics card. For a while, the new rig was too good to be true, and then it wasn't anymore.
A few weeks later: I come home yet again to a dead computer, this time it's only the power supply that's dead, which I promptly refunded to NewEgg with my 'suspicious eyebrows' raised.
After a month of slow troubleshooting with full-time work and school I had a new power supply and liquid cooling for my CPU to rule out overheating, and I thought I had totally narrowed it down: it just had to be the graphics card, so I sent it in for an RMA. After what seemed like forever, the manufacturer contacted me and said they were sending it back after exhaustive testing marked as "NTF: No Trouble Found". That brings me to today, where I'm exhausted after my own testing and am almost ready to just start throwing money at computer repair stores until I can play GTA:5.
My current problem: My computer starts fine and appears to run fine, but occasionally after a while, and 100% of the time I try to start any game, my screens either go black or display a fractured diagonal colorful pattern and restarts like the following images:
This tricky glitch is very rude and usually doesn't bother to leave a BSOD dump, but the last three it left are attached below. The latest was when I started CS:GO although it's the same with any game, just around when I get to the menu or try to join a server.
http://
My event viewer shows 14 critical events since the last BSOD dump, all with "Kernel-Power" as the source, event ID 41, tast category "(63)", and all reading "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."
I've been switching out the graphics cards like a madman on a newly purchased open-box motherboard, knowing in my gut that they're both fine. I've also been uninstalling the drivers and freshly reinstalling them after a clean sweep with Revo Pro. I have my eye on an AMD FX-8350 so I can swap test with another CPU, but the situation certainly smells to me like the unfathomable: another power supply issue. I was thinking of the possibility that since I live in an old house (my front door alarm is broken and a three-bulb ceiling fixture flickered out just today) it might be the case of bad wiring that's killing power supplies and screwing with whatever graphics card is currently in there every time I start a game. I'm hoping you'll call me crazy, because it that's plausible I just might have to get a UPS capable enough for my wattage, which is going lighten my wallet a couple hundred and then possibly not even fix the problem.
I'm really at my wit's end here and would appreciate any fresh perspectives on this, or if anyone has seen or heard about something like this before. Thanks very much just for reading, I tried to be thorough but might have written too much.
TL/DR: Can driver errors and crashes without BSOD dumps when starting games be caused by a third faulty PSU in a row, caused in turn by antiquated wiring?
My rig, currently in vs. able to swap:
Two 23" Acer P215H monitors
Antec 650W PSU Bronze+ Certified
MSI 970A-G46 (Asus M5A78L-M LX Plus)
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 275 (GTX 760)
AMD FX-4170
16GB RAM at 1600
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD
Half-broken WDC WD101PVT 1TB 5400RPM
My name's Collin and I've been finding excellent, creative solutions to my clients problems here for over a decade but have regretfully never posted anything. I've never in my life had to use a professional service to troubleshoot a PC before, so I've come to you for help on the first problem that's really stumped me, and of course it would have to be on my own computer.
Couple months ago: Came home to a fried computer, surge protector letting off a high-pitched 'beeeep' and no longer functioning. PSU appeared to have destroyed my motherboard, RAM, and my hard-drive was already failing, so decided to upgrade and got an SSD, basic motherboard, and a new graphics card. For a while, the new rig was too good to be true, and then it wasn't anymore.
A few weeks later: I come home yet again to a dead computer, this time it's only the power supply that's dead, which I promptly refunded to NewEgg with my 'suspicious eyebrows' raised.
After a month of slow troubleshooting with full-time work and school I had a new power supply and liquid cooling for my CPU to rule out overheating, and I thought I had totally narrowed it down: it just had to be the graphics card, so I sent it in for an RMA. After what seemed like forever, the manufacturer contacted me and said they were sending it back after exhaustive testing marked as "NTF: No Trouble Found". That brings me to today, where I'm exhausted after my own testing and am almost ready to just start throwing money at computer repair stores until I can play GTA:5.
My current problem: My computer starts fine and appears to run fine, but occasionally after a while, and 100% of the time I try to start any game, my screens either go black or display a fractured diagonal colorful pattern and restarts like the following images:
This tricky glitch is very rude and usually doesn't bother to leave a BSOD dump, but the last three it left are attached below. The latest was when I started CS:GO although it's the same with any game, just around when I get to the menu or try to join a server.
http://
My event viewer shows 14 critical events since the last BSOD dump, all with "Kernel-Power" as the source, event ID 41, tast category "(63)", and all reading "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."
I've been switching out the graphics cards like a madman on a newly purchased open-box motherboard, knowing in my gut that they're both fine. I've also been uninstalling the drivers and freshly reinstalling them after a clean sweep with Revo Pro. I have my eye on an AMD FX-8350 so I can swap test with another CPU, but the situation certainly smells to me like the unfathomable: another power supply issue. I was thinking of the possibility that since I live in an old house (my front door alarm is broken and a three-bulb ceiling fixture flickered out just today) it might be the case of bad wiring that's killing power supplies and screwing with whatever graphics card is currently in there every time I start a game. I'm hoping you'll call me crazy, because it that's plausible I just might have to get a UPS capable enough for my wattage, which is going lighten my wallet a couple hundred and then possibly not even fix the problem.
I'm really at my wit's end here and would appreciate any fresh perspectives on this, or if anyone has seen or heard about something like this before. Thanks very much just for reading, I tried to be thorough but might have written too much.
TL/DR: Can driver errors and crashes without BSOD dumps when starting games be caused by a third faulty PSU in a row, caused in turn by antiquated wiring?
My rig, currently in vs. able to swap:
Two 23" Acer P215H monitors
Antec 650W PSU Bronze+ Certified
MSI 970A-G46 (Asus M5A78L-M LX Plus)
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 275 (GTX 760)
AMD FX-4170
16GB RAM at 1600
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD
Half-broken WDC WD101PVT 1TB 5400RPM
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