- Aug 2, 2015
- 11
- 0
- 4,510
Hello everyone,
My computer is giving me more and more random freezes that require hard restarts during gaming lately. The computer logs these events only as error ID 41s (uncontrolled shutdown), so unfortunately the event logger does not tell me what is going wrong before I press the restart button.
I built the computer roughly 9 months ago, and it seems to become increasingly unstable. These random events sometimes occur just with a couple of minutes in-between, but sometimes you might waste an entire weekend gaming without ever crashing. The seeming randomness makes it difficult for me to zoom in on the problem.
This is how far I have come with narrowing down the issue myself:
According to a hardware log by hwinfo64, temparatures and load are fine (not at peak) across the entire PC when those crashes occur, so I do not think it is an overheating issue.
PSU voltages are spot-on according to hwinfo64, Asus' AI suite and Bios (do not have a PSU tester yet to verify all the plugs).
According to Crystal Disk and Samsung's Magician, my SSD is healthy as well.
Memtest86 ran a full pass without errors, so RAM is probably okay good I believe (still have to reseat and/or do long term test).
I did a stress test on the GPU months ago but should repeat that to be sure that it's not that.
The CPU was tested with intel's diagnostic tool, which gave a pass - so CPU might not be it.
Update 1: I also did a burn-in test with the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool. There were no errors and temparatures stayed at 60° Celsius, so CPU does not seem to be it.
However, when I run Hot CPU Tester, which supposedly tests both mainboard and cpu, my computer restarts somewhere in the middle of the test (which takes 6 hours). I have done this twice now, and at neither times did the computer create a report file for the test - so I assume it must have crashed. Therefore, at this point I suspect that the issue is either the Motherboard or the CPU.
This is my system:
CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K
Motherboard: Asus Maximux VII Gene (Z97)
RAM: 2x 8GB G.Skill (19200 DDR3-2400 CL10)
SSD: Samsung SSD evo 840, 512 GB
GPU: MSI GTX 970
PSU: 500 Watt be quiet! Straight Power E9 Non-Modular 80+ Gold
Audio: Soundblaster USB SBX pro studio
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
Is there a way I can dissociate between these rivaling hypotheses? That is, rule out one culprit in 'favor' of the other (CPU vs. PSU vs. mainboard)? What other things can I try to get a clearer picture?
All the best,
Arthur
My computer is giving me more and more random freezes that require hard restarts during gaming lately. The computer logs these events only as error ID 41s (uncontrolled shutdown), so unfortunately the event logger does not tell me what is going wrong before I press the restart button.
I built the computer roughly 9 months ago, and it seems to become increasingly unstable. These random events sometimes occur just with a couple of minutes in-between, but sometimes you might waste an entire weekend gaming without ever crashing. The seeming randomness makes it difficult for me to zoom in on the problem.
This is how far I have come with narrowing down the issue myself:
According to a hardware log by hwinfo64, temparatures and load are fine (not at peak) across the entire PC when those crashes occur, so I do not think it is an overheating issue.
PSU voltages are spot-on according to hwinfo64, Asus' AI suite and Bios (do not have a PSU tester yet to verify all the plugs).
According to Crystal Disk and Samsung's Magician, my SSD is healthy as well.
Memtest86 ran a full pass without errors, so RAM is probably okay good I believe (still have to reseat and/or do long term test).
I did a stress test on the GPU months ago but should repeat that to be sure that it's not that.
The CPU was tested with intel's diagnostic tool, which gave a pass - so CPU might not be it.
Update 1: I also did a burn-in test with the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool. There were no errors and temparatures stayed at 60° Celsius, so CPU does not seem to be it.
However, when I run Hot CPU Tester, which supposedly tests both mainboard and cpu, my computer restarts somewhere in the middle of the test (which takes 6 hours). I have done this twice now, and at neither times did the computer create a report file for the test - so I assume it must have crashed. Therefore, at this point I suspect that the issue is either the Motherboard or the CPU.
This is my system:
CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K
Motherboard: Asus Maximux VII Gene (Z97)
RAM: 2x 8GB G.Skill (19200 DDR3-2400 CL10)
SSD: Samsung SSD evo 840, 512 GB
GPU: MSI GTX 970
PSU: 500 Watt be quiet! Straight Power E9 Non-Modular 80+ Gold
Audio: Soundblaster USB SBX pro studio
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
Is there a way I can dissociate between these rivaling hypotheses? That is, rule out one culprit in 'favor' of the other (CPU vs. PSU vs. mainboard)? What other things can I try to get a clearer picture?
All the best,
Arthur
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