Hey everyone! I'm dealing with a frustrating issue where my PC just restarts out of the blue, especially while gaming or even when I'm not playing anything. I've got an Intel i7 4th-gen CPU and a Gigabyte B85M-DS3H motherboard paired with DDR3 RAM. Initially, my CPU was running hot at around 90 °C, but after a thorough cleaning and applying new thermal paste, it's now down to about 47 °C while gaming. I also replaced my PSU from an old 500W to a new 400W and even switched out the RAM, but the problem still persists. I've tried running the PC without my GPU, and it still restarts. There's no blue screen or anything; it just suddenly powers down and restarts. It tends to restart more often when I set the power plan to high performance or adjust the slider to the maximum performance in the power settings. I'm trying to figure out if this could be an issue with the PSU, motherboard VRM, or something else before I consider getting a new motherboard. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
4 Answers
You might want to use a tool like MSI Afterburner to monitor your voltage levels; it can display them graphically. Also, even though you've tested without a GPU, controlling the graphics power might help if any software-related issues are lurking there. Have you considered using TrottleStop to limit the turbo boost of your CPU? It could help stabilize things.
Have you checked for dump files from any crashes? Those can really help in diagnosing issues. If you can boot into Windows, try looking in C:WindowsMinidump for any crash logs. You can upload them to a file-sharing site for others to analyze, and it can give you a better idea of what's going wrong.
Repairing Windows might be worth a shot. Using the DISM tool can help fix any corrupted files that might be causing instability. Have you tried that yet?
I've had a similar experience, and it turned out to be a problem with the VGA card. I ran benchmarks, checked temperatures, but nothing showed up as wrong. It was only when I reinstalled Windows that the restarts became less frequent. It might be time to consider whether your PSU or video card is aging.
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