Hey everyone! I've been building PCs for years, and I'm stumped about a new issue. My computer just started shutting down unexpectedly while I'm gaming. At first, I thought it might be my GPU or CPU overheating, but I monitor the temps and they stay under 70°C. I have an RTX 3080 graphic card and a water-cooled CPU with a good setup—three fans and a large radiator. The strange part is my power supply unit (PSU) gets really hot and I can't restart the computer until I flip it off for a while. I cleaned it out thinking it would help, but the problem keeps coming back. This PSU is about 8 years old so I'm wondering if it's just reaching the end of its life. Does anyone think the PSU might be the main issue?
3 Answers
It definitely sounds like a PSU issue to me. Those things can go bad over time, especially after 8 years. I recommend just getting a new one since they’re fairly cheap nowadays.
Yeah, I bet it’s the power supply. I used to deal with those cheap PSUs back in the day, and they would overheat or just fail all the time. It’s a common issue!
Make sure to calculate the wattage you need for your setup to test the PSU reliability. My own PC had a shutdown issue that turned out to be a dying SSD, but you definitely want to check that PSU first.
Good advice! I didn't even think about that. I'll do a quick check on my PSU and see if that might be the problem.