After updating the BIOS on my MSI B450I Gaming Plus AC, my PC began restarting on its own after roughly 30 minutes of use. It shuts down and powers back on almost instantly, then boots into Windows normally. I had been considering a CPU upgrade but discovered compatibility issues beforehand. I've already spent several hours testing BIOS defaults and adjusting XMP, but the restarts continue. My system has a Ryzen 5 3600X, Radeon RX 7700 XT, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and an MSI B450I Gaming Plus AC motherboard. What should I check to determine whether this is a BIOS, hardware, or Windows-related problem?
1 Answer
First, check Event Viewer to see whether Windows is recording a normal shutdown or an unexpected power loss. Kernel-Power Event ID 41 usually means the system lost power or restarted without completing a proper shutdown, but it doesn’t identify the actual cause. To separate Windows from hardware or firmware issues, boot from a Linux Mint USB and leave it running in the live environment for a while. If it restarts there too, the problem is probably outside Windows—such as the power supply, motherboard, CPU temperatures, or BIOS settings.
The only relevant entry I found was Kernel-Power 41, which mentioned an unexpected power loss.