Critical PC failure

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Supernova1138

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Oct 24, 2011
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Can you give some more information about your power supply, eg. Make and model. Not all power supplies are created equal, and there are a lot of cheap low quality units out there that say they can deliver X number of watts, when in actuality they can only deliver half their stated wattage over a sustained period. There are also a lot of PSUs that have severe voltage ripple issues which can lead to shutdowns as well, largely due to being made with low quality capacitors.

Other things to check for include temperatures, you can use programs like HWMonitor to look at those. If your PC is overheating, it will start throttling back performance to protect itself from damage and may also trigger a shutdown if throttling is proving to be insufficient to get the temperatures back down to a safe level. If your CPU or GPU are exceeding 95 degrees celsius, you have an overheating problem.

Bad RAM can cause this problem too, though often memory errors will result in bluescreens and other errors, it doesn't hurt to run Memtest to make sure you don't have a bad stick that could be causing problems.

This could also be a sign of a failing motherboard, particularly if it's fairly old. One thing to check for is look on your motherboard and check the capacitors on it. If the tops of the capacitors are bulging or are actually leaking, then your motherboard is definitely on its way out.
 

SnowyGamester

Tech Head
Oct 18, 2009
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The PSU might be starting to fail or it may be cutting out to prevent damage from overheating. Check all your fans are clear and working, try another PSU if available.
 

bfgmetalhead

New member
Aug 4, 2010
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Supernova1138 said:
Can you give some more information about your power supply, eg. Make and model. Not all power supplies are created equal, and there are a lot of cheap low quality units out there that say they can deliver X number of watts, when in actuality they can only deliver half their stated wattage over a sustained period. There are also a lot of PSUs that have severe voltage ripple issues which can lead to shutdowns as well, largely due to being made with low quality capacitors.

Other things to check for include temperatures, you can use programs like HWMonitor to look at those. If your PC is overheating, it will start throttling back performance to protect itself from damage and may also trigger a shutdown if throttling is proving to be insufficient to get the temperatures back down to a safe level. If your CPU or GPU are exceeding 95 degrees celsius, you have an overheating problem.

Bad RAM can cause this problem too, though often memory errors will result in bluescreens and other errors, it doesn't hurt to run Memtest to make sure you don't have a bad stick that could be causing problems.

This could also be a sign of a failing motherboard, particularly if it's fairly old. One thing to check for is look on your motherboard and check the capacitors on it. If the tops of the capacitors are bulging or are actually leaking, then your motherboard is definitely on its way out.
I don't know what make and model it is as it came with my PC when I bought it 3 years ago, however it's never been a problem before and as I mentioned I fixed this problem for three months. I reckon if it was a PSU problem then it would have persisted. The same for overheating too, if that was the cause it wouldn't have abated for three months.

The RAM, I will check as I haven't ruled it out as the cause yet and as for the motherboard the capacitors look fine (it's quite a new board)

Thx for responding :D
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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When I last built a PC, I ended up getting a RAM stick that was not actually capable of it's claimed speed.

The computer was randomly shutting down... I finally traced it to the ram, but I couldn't be bothered dealing with getting a replacement, so what I did was set the memory clock to a slower speed than the official speed the RAM was rated at, and the problem went away...

Other than that, I've seen the same problem happen very often due to overheating.
Keep in mind that overheating can be seasonal, because the outside air temperature will make a difference too...
If you have really cold winters and/or really hot summers, you may find your system overheats a lot during one part of the year, but not the other.

Finally, my mother's PC had this odd habit of resetting at random, which, after a lot of messing about I traced to a faulty power switch on the case.
Since modern switches are low-voltage soft-switches, if the power or reset switch is shorting at all, your system will turn off or reset.

I fixed that one by replacing the switch itself. (These are generic parts after all.)