Video card causing entire computer to shutdown/reboot

[Stone9]

Hey guys,

I recently switched from a HD 6950 to a GTX 570 (Gigabyte GV-N570SO-13I). I've been playing Skyrim, but I'm seeing random complete system crashes, where the system turns off then reboots. I'm wondering what the problem is. I figure it's mostly likely my PSU, however, it's 650W so I figure that would be enough. I didn't have this problem with the HD 6950.

Important note, I am running the Nvidia Beta 290.53 drivers...

I've been running MSI afterburner to monitor the temps on the GPU and I haven't seen any temps above 75C so I don't think thats it. I haven't altered the stock overclocking either.

I've read some other posts online about Skyrim crashing the entire machine, but it's unclear if the game was to blame (not sure why the game would cause that).

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[Sunius]

Did your HD6950 work correctly?

It might be driver issue, I'd suggest reinstalling windows since your switched from AMD to Nvidia.

Also, what brand is your PSU?

 

[GreenDutchAlien]

Did you remove the old AMD drivers ( with driversweeper or something similar ) ?

 

[Stone9]

Yes, I did remove the old AMD drivers.

 

[Stone9]

Did your HD6950 work correctly?

It might be driver issue, I'd suggest reinstalling windows since your switched from AMD to Nvidia.

Also, what brand is your PSU?

It's BFG, 650W. Does this really require reinstalling Windows?

 

[Sunius]

It normally doesn't, but in problems like yours, it's a fast solution to problems, which are driver related.

GTX 570 doesn't draw much more power than HD6950, so if it worked fine, it's probably driver related.

 

[GreenDutchAlien]

I don't believe reinstalling windows would help, you would be using the same drivers which you are using now.

I see you have a gigabyte factory oc'd 570 ?

Maybe try to use the drivers from the site from gigabyte, i believe the gigabyte oc versions only work nicely with the reccomended drivers from the GB site.

Also see if there is a bios update on that site for your 570.

I have a 560ti soc which only works smoothly with older drivers comming from the GB site.

Worth a try maybe.

 

[cybneo]

Could be the game. Try playing other games and see if it crashes. Could try to reinstall the game. Skyrim may have config files tied to your old card...

 

[Stone9]

Could be the game. Try playing other games and see if it crashes. Could try to reinstall the game. Skyrim may have config files tied to your old card...

I don't have any other game to test this with, but I did test with furmark and the system shuts down when furmark starts...

I'm going to try the Gigabyte drivers to see if that makes a difference.

Is a 650W power supply enough for this card? I have a Core i5 750 OC'd to 3.6 GHz (no additional voltage), 16GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 3 HDD's, and a Corsair 650D.

 

[esrever]

You should definitely try another psu at this point. how old is your psu? and what brand? and the 570 does draw more power than the 6950, it draws 80 watts more power under load.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2010/12/16/ati-radeon-hd-6950-review/10

the card itself pulling 330 watts and your oc'ed cpu, its probably the PSU

 

[GreenDutchAlien]

That sounds like the same problem i had in the beginning with my 560, even with the Windows performance index ( translated from Dutch OS ) it would shut down and reboot. That was with very old drivers who came with the gpu. After updating with Gigabyte's driver it works flawless. With newer ones from Nvidia site it got weird again, shutting down the color scheme from my desktop and stuff, went back to GB drivers, no problem so far.

650W is enough.

 

[GreenDutchAlien]

Oh, right, talking bout the 570, got confused with the 6950, indeed 650W could be to low looking at the oc'd cpu and that Ram amount.

 

[delluser1]

You should definitely try another psu at this point. how old is your psu? and what brand? and the 570 does draw more power than the 6950, it draws 80 watts more power under load.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2010/12/16/ati-radeon-hd-6950-review/10

the card itself pulling 330 watts and your oc'ed cpu, its probably the PSU

That's power consumption for the entire system, not just the card.

I'd be inclined to think it was the psu, BFG never had much to offer in that arena.

 

[Stone9]

Hey guys, thanks for all the great replys. Using the drivers that came with the video card from GB didn't seem to help. I did some more investigation and I found some people having similar issues with the overclocked card. Some tried changing the clock speeds to the default GTX 570 speeds. I figured I would test this. I downloaded MSI Kombustor and ran it at the GB stock OC. It shut down the computer before I even saw the benchmarking graphics get displayed. I then downclocked the card to Nvidia stock speeds. When running Kombustor again, I was able to see the benchmarking screen for about 5-8 seconds before the machine shut down. So, still not sure if it's the card or my PSU, but this does at least give me some info.

Does anyone have a suggestion for testing if it is indeed my PSU? Should I remove 8GB of RAM temporarily, or maybe downclock my CPU back to normal, unhook some of my system fans?

I'll probably start another post to ask for recommendations for a new PSU.

 

[esrever]

you'd probably just want to test another psu with your system to see if it works.

as for the downclock, it should effect anything unless your card is very bad.

 

[Stone9]

Hey guys, I removed the overclock on my CPU (3.6-->2.66) and I am now able to run Furmark without the system shutting off. Skyrim still causes the system to shutdown intermittently, but not nearly as often. I ended up buying a new PSU, it should get here today. I'll be sure to post my results after testing everything with my new PSU. It's a Corsair 1200W. Probably overkill but I just wanted extra headroom for possible SLI and for when I upgrade to Ivy Bridge Core i7 and the possibility of significantly more RAM.

 

[onemiguel]

I would recommend running some kind of tool like HWINFO to log your stats while you play and that was when you do crash, you can go back and check the log file to see what the temps where when it did crash!

I recently documented my testing here and I'm more confident that my hardware is NOT the issue.

http://one-miguel.blogspot.com/2012/01/blinking-outrebooting.html

 

[Stone9]

I ended up purchasing a Corsair AX1200. After installing that I'm able to run the various benchmarking tests and play Skyrim without it shutting down. So I think we can be reasonably confident that in this case it was in fact my PSU, even though it was 650W.

That's a great recommendation though Miguel, I definitely could have used it in this situation. I'll try and use it when I'm monitoring my OC'd setup.

 

[jdiamond101163]

Just seen this and am replying only because although this question is old I have had a similar problem - the funny thing is that the very tool that this guy was using to help find the problem was the culprit in my case. MSI afterburner causes my PC to crash when shuting down and when running graphically intensive games. I have removed it from my system and no more issues.

I was searching the web for answers and didn't find any - in the end I worked it out through creating a new account and adding apps followed by a shutdown to find the culprit. So hopefully if anybody is getting these sorts of errors , consider MSI afterburner may be the problem. Remove it completely and then make sure you reboot twice - the first time it will still crash, the second time it should be OK.