For the past three or four days, my PC has been shutting off completely and restarting instantly at random. It happens during gaming and while idle or browsing, so it doesn't seem related to system load. The only recent software change was a Windows in-place upgrade intended to repair corrupted system files.
Temperatures, PSU voltage readings, and SSD health all look normal. I tried reducing my RAM speed, adjusting my undervolt settings, and running a 10-minute OCCT AVX2 power test, which completed without errors. None of those changes affected the crashes. My undervolt profiles have also been stable for roughly four and a half years.
The behavior resembles pressing the reset button, so I disconnected the case's reset-switch connector, but the restarts continued. Event Viewer shows Kernel-Power event ID 41, but no WHEA errors or other obvious clues. I'm also wondering whether Windows corruption could cause this kind of sudden restart.
My system has an ASUS ROG Strix B550-F motherboard, Ryzen 7 5800X, Aorus RTX 3080 Ti, Aorus Gen4 SSD, 32 GB of Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 CL18 memory, a Corsair RM850x 3.0 PSU, and an Arctic Liquid Freezer III AIO. The PSU was replaced at the end of August after the previous unit showed low voltage, so the current one is relatively new.
1 Answer
A Kernel-Power 41 entry usually only confirms that Windows detected an unexpected shutdown; it doesn’t identify the cause. Check Reliability Monitor for a pattern and compare the exact timestamps with hardware-monitoring logs. If the system still restarts with BIOS defaults, the next useful steps would be isolating components and testing with minimal hardware, since a failing PSU, motherboard, RAM module, GPU, or connection can all produce an instant reset without a WHEA error.
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