- May 27, 2015
- 3
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- 4,510
As the title says, I am having issues diagnosing why my PC shuts down unexpectedly. The issues occurs most frequently while attempting to play Cities: Skylines, but it has also occurred while casually web browsing, etc.
Full System Specs:
• Operating System - Windows 7 Pro
• CPU - Intel Core i7 4690k (stock heatsink)
• RAM - 32 GB DDR3-1866 - Crucial Ballistix Sport XT
• Video Card - AMD Radeon R9 200 series (SAPPHIRE DUAL-X R9 270X 2GB)
• MOBO - ASUS Z97-AR
• Power Supply - Corsair HX850
• Primary HD - 1 TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD
• Other HDs - 4 TB HGST Deskstar NAS, 2 TB Hitachi
• I have 4 120 mm fans on the case
• No Overclocking
I have tried a number of different things to troubleshoot the issue.
Originally, the issue first started while playing Cities: Skylines (although I played for 20-30 hours before the first time it shut down like that) and then started occurring was some regularity, no matter what I was doing. It got to the point where it was a challenge just to get it to boot up.
At the time, I was running different MOBO and PSU - ASRock Z97 Extreme 4 and Corsair CS650M. I had a hunch that the MOBO had gone bad as I had found some threads for that MOBO with users complaining of the same start up issues (plus I had had one go bad already), but I also suspected that my PSU was slightly underpowered so I went ahead and swapped that out too as most unexpected shutdown issues seem to point back to the PSU going bad.
Initially, that seemed to fix the issue. I went a few weeks with no unexpected shutdowns and could play Cities: Skylines as long as I liked. But then the issue started occurring again.
I am not getting a BSOD or any errors, the system just shuts down and restarts. I tried disabling the auto restart functionality, but it keeps doing it anyway. When I look in the event logs all I see if a "system unexpectedly shut down" message.
Since the issue popped back up, I have tried the following:
• Ensured all drivers are up to date
• Ran SFC to ensure Windows was not corrupted
• Adjusted the Overdrive settings in AMD Catalyst Control to turn down the GPU / RAM clock speeds.
• Disabled the Intel integrated graphics service (can't recall the exact name)
• Ran HWInfo64 to monitor system temps
• Tried playing with the video settings in Cities:Skylines to see if that made any difference
Some changes seemed to make a difference temporarily, but the issue keeps coming back.
Regarding CPU temps, when I am playing Cities: Skylines, the temp gets into the high 70s to mid 80s. But, like I said earlier, I have also seen it shut down unexpectedly while simply clicking a link on a webpage when the CPU is running in the low 40s.
The last two things I can think of are replacing the CPU heatsink and/or replacing the video card, but I would like to explore other ideas before going that route.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Full System Specs:
• Operating System - Windows 7 Pro
• CPU - Intel Core i7 4690k (stock heatsink)
• RAM - 32 GB DDR3-1866 - Crucial Ballistix Sport XT
• Video Card - AMD Radeon R9 200 series (SAPPHIRE DUAL-X R9 270X 2GB)
• MOBO - ASUS Z97-AR
• Power Supply - Corsair HX850
• Primary HD - 1 TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD
• Other HDs - 4 TB HGST Deskstar NAS, 2 TB Hitachi
• I have 4 120 mm fans on the case
• No Overclocking
I have tried a number of different things to troubleshoot the issue.
Originally, the issue first started while playing Cities: Skylines (although I played for 20-30 hours before the first time it shut down like that) and then started occurring was some regularity, no matter what I was doing. It got to the point where it was a challenge just to get it to boot up.
At the time, I was running different MOBO and PSU - ASRock Z97 Extreme 4 and Corsair CS650M. I had a hunch that the MOBO had gone bad as I had found some threads for that MOBO with users complaining of the same start up issues (plus I had had one go bad already), but I also suspected that my PSU was slightly underpowered so I went ahead and swapped that out too as most unexpected shutdown issues seem to point back to the PSU going bad.
Initially, that seemed to fix the issue. I went a few weeks with no unexpected shutdowns and could play Cities: Skylines as long as I liked. But then the issue started occurring again.
I am not getting a BSOD or any errors, the system just shuts down and restarts. I tried disabling the auto restart functionality, but it keeps doing it anyway. When I look in the event logs all I see if a "system unexpectedly shut down" message.
Since the issue popped back up, I have tried the following:
• Ensured all drivers are up to date
• Ran SFC to ensure Windows was not corrupted
• Adjusted the Overdrive settings in AMD Catalyst Control to turn down the GPU / RAM clock speeds.
• Disabled the Intel integrated graphics service (can't recall the exact name)
• Ran HWInfo64 to monitor system temps
• Tried playing with the video settings in Cities:Skylines to see if that made any difference
Some changes seemed to make a difference temporarily, but the issue keeps coming back.
Regarding CPU temps, when I am playing Cities: Skylines, the temp gets into the high 70s to mid 80s. But, like I said earlier, I have also seen it shut down unexpectedly while simply clicking a link on a webpage when the CPU is running in the low 40s.
The last two things I can think of are replacing the CPU heatsink and/or replacing the video card, but I would like to explore other ideas before going that route.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
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