For roughly a year and a half, my PC has randomly restarted without showing a blue screen. It usually happens during graphically demanding games, but it has also occurred while watching YouTube. Before restarting, the display sometimes flickers, half the screen fills with static-like artifacts, and I hear a faint popping sound. The screen then stays black for about five seconds before the computer powers back on. One crash even damaged my Windows installation and caused me to lose important photos.
I have already reset and updated the BIOS as far as possible, reinstalled Windows, reseated and replaced the RAM, replaced the power supply, swapped SSDs, and tried several other fixes. The system uses a Ryzen 5 4500, MSI X370 SLI Plus motherboard, 32GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4, Radeon RX 6600, three SATA SSDs, and a 1000W Montech Century 2 Gold-rated PSU. What should I test next to identify the cause?
4 Answers
The visual artifacts and faint pop before the restart make the graphics card, motherboard, or another power-delivery component possible suspects. Try a different graphics card if you can borrow one, inspect the GPU and PCIe slot, and monitor temperatures and voltages under load. Since the power supply has already been replaced, the motherboard becomes especially worth testing or replacing if another GPU does not change the behavior.
An outdated BIOS can cause instability with newer CPUs or graphics cards, although the available firmware for this motherboard may be limited. Make sure the chipset and graphics drivers are cleanly installed as well. Until the cause is found, keep important photos backed up somewhere separate, because repeated hard resets can corrupt the Windows drive and files.
Try running the computer with minimum hardware: one RAM module, the operating-system SSD, and the graphics card, with unnecessary USB devices disconnected. Disable any overclocking or memory profile and test with default settings. If it still produces artifacts and abruptly restarts, swapping in a known-good motherboard or GPU is likely faster than reinstalling Windows again.
Check Reliability Monitor first by pressing Win+R, entering `perfmon /rel`, and reviewing the red X entries around each restart. It may show whether Windows recorded a hardware error, display-driver failure, or unexpected shutdown. Memory is still worth testing one stick at a time with a proper bootable memory test, even though the RAM has already been replaced.
I suspected the RAM at first too, but the problem continued after replacing every module. I’ll still test each stick individually and check the crash history.