Help wanted: Strange crashes within minutes of starting up a game

[Xenobane]

Hey all,

I’ve been having some strange crashes while playing games that I cannot seem to solve.



Specs:

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460

MB: ASRock H81M-ITX

Memory: 8 GB DDR3

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970

PSU: Cooler Master GM G550M




Everything seems to work fine while doing non-gaming stuff.

Start up a game and within minutes the pc dies and restarts. Last Tuesday I was able to play games and the crashes were there sometimes but very infrequent, while at the moment its every time that it crashes, like clockwork.

At first I thought it was a temperature thing but those seem to be in check at the moment.

Since its within minutes of starting a game I have a relatively small log (< 3 minutes) and I was wondering if anyone here can spot something in the logs that I’m missing as a cause for these full system shutdowns.

I started the logging and then the game, after playing for a minute or so it crashes.

After it (seemingly) just cuts off power to everything it then automatically starts back up like what would happen when you press restart instead of shutdown: everything goes black, screens lose input and then system restarts itself, screen regain input and a Windows login prompt welcomes you.

If anyone could take a look I’d be very grateful and if there is any information missing please let me know.

 

[Dalai]

Try to reproduce the crashes with FurMark and/or Prime95. If they occur with either of those programs, the PC has a hardware issue. Depending on where it crashes (GPU or CPU load), it's likely that the PSU or GPU or even the mainboard is the culprit. It's also possible that the PCIe power cables are problematic, especially if you happen to daisy-chain them instead of using two separate cables (if your GPU has two plugs).

Regards
Dalai

 

[Xenobane]

Try to reproduce the crashes with FurMark and/or Prime95. If they occur with either of those programs, the PC has a hardware issue. Depending on where it crashes (GPU or CPU load), it's likely that the PSU or GPU or even the mainboard is the culprit. It's also possible that the PCIe power cables are problematic, especially if you happen to daisy-chain them instead of using two separate cables (if your GPU has two plugs).

Regards
Dalai

Will check that out, thank you.

Did you also find that the logs show little that would explain the crashes or is this just general advise?

 

[Dalai]

Your log doesn't show anything unusual. That being said, the 12V line drops voltage as soon as the GPU load goes up (and vice versa), but it's still within the ATX spec/tolerance (+- 5% IIRC). It's possible that the PSU can't keep up with the fast changes in load. You could try another PSU just for testing (maybe you or someone you know has a spare unit) if the tests with the software I mentioned above don't reveal anything helpful.

Regards
Dalai

 

[TomWoB]

Two things:

• voltages are within ATX-spec but there can be high current-peaks which we don't see in the logs
• you have only 8 GB of RAM, "Physical Memory Load [%!" is close to 70% -> there happens "some swapping with virtual memory". Don't know how "sensitive your game for time critical responeses is" (?)

For both points:
Do some gaming with "low (graphic) settings in game" to reduce power consumption of GPU and GPU to check if system is more stable then

 

[Xenobane]

Two things:

• voltages are within ATX-spec but there can be high current-peaks which we don't see in the logs
• you have only 8 GB of RAM, "Physical Memory Load [%!" is close to 70% -> there happens "some swapping with virtual memory". Don't know how "sensitive your game for time critical responeses is" (?)

For both points:
Do some gaming with "low (graphic) settings in game" to reduce power consumption of GPU and GPU to check if system is more stable then

Thank you for your reply!

I've tested it with Valheim, lowering the settings doesnt seem to change much unfortunately.

When I have the time to backup everything important I'll do some tests like Dalal suggested and go from there. If that yield no results add ram or change the PSU etc.