PC Crashing after 20mins of Gaming

[Jace007]

Hi Guys
I'm having a problem with my PC and its comes down to x2 Parts. The issue is this, During gaming the PC turns it Self OFF
The PC Try's to turn if self On, I can Hear the PSU turning on, And then the GPU briefly turning on before it Turns OFF, Then it Will try to Turn On again, The GPU will try to Come on, I hear the Fans Spin on and then the PC goes Off.
Is this a PSU Issue or A GPU Issue?

I have tried the GPU (MSI GTX 970) in another PC and ran a benchmark for 30min no issues.
I have Ran my gaming PC without this Card for 1 hour just normal use no issue. (PSU Corsair 850HX)

Any idea, Cheers.

[deejayburnout]

How old is your PSU. It might be it shutting down if it's old or under powered. At 850w I expect it should be enough depending on rig setup.

What are the specs of the pc that keeps crashing?

[Zak33]

start at the very beginning

take the side off... open the windows of your room.. get a desk fan and aim it into the PC case...

then play games... if it doesnt' crash... or take a lot longer to crash. you have a heat issue.

If it still crashes fast.. you have a non heat related issue.

Sometimes a really good vacuum cleaning will unblock a heatsink!

-----

If it's not heat, start with easy things....

Download memtest.. and burn the image to a CD.. then change your PC to boot off the CD draw and put the disk in.. the PC will boot into memtest and fully chack the ram... it takes a while.. let it run.
http://www.memtest86.com/

If the ram is ok, then take as many things off the PC as you can.. unplug USB cameras, and if you built the PC, unplug power to other devices like extra hard drives etc... see if something is causing trouble.

Do things logically.. patiently.. make notes of the changes you make while making them and follow it like a science project

[gl30]

This may sound like a ridiculous suggestion but is your mains power supply stable? I used to be in a house with a highly variable supply (and probably highly dangerous) and it would sometimes kick off the PC, especially if I was drawing power from other things like an electric heater at the same time. Just a thought...

[Jace007]

Hi guys.. Thanks for your input.

Spec
I7 2600k
16RAM Corsair
850W HX Corsair PSU.
z68XP Gigabyte motherboard
MSI Nvidia GTX 970

Ran memory test x2 No issues

Idl temp for GPU is around 32c and 1Hour of gaming its between 62 and 65c

Event Viewer Has no errors, no warnings apart from that Crash 'Unexpected Shutdown', So its not Software related. - Gl30 mains power is fine.


So tried the following; Took PC to basics all others harddrives disconnected, no USB apart from KB & mouse.
Clean install Win7. Turned off AV. Ran for about 1hr and 2mins Same thing PC just powered off, Then trys to turn on but cant.
I tried different games, thinking it might be Battlefield 4.

Took out GPU put into 2nd PC again, left for 1 hour GPU benchmark/stress Test, all settings max, No issues so put it back into Main PC
I then reset motherboard BIOS to default settings. Played for 2 hours crashed.

Shame that PSUs are'nt More intelligent, i.e have some form of Control system, that’s logs power & temp.
Without the harddrives & GPU and a simple 64MB graphics card The PC ran fine, I left it on for 5 hours nothing happen, Could that be that its not under load, Where as GPU requires more power from PSU
leading to think this is a PSU issue :S hmmm....

P.s Zak u Sig MegaLOL

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[carved_eye]

What is your cable management like is it neat and tidy in the case? If it is not then it could be down to bad airflow and the system is overheating, but going off them temps i might be wrong, it could be a motherboard issue as well.

[evs]

As a leftfield suggestion - try with just one of the sticks of ram in, could be a memory leak on the game you are playing and when you hit it you get some weird overflow and it falls over.
Also if you reset your bios make sure that you have no clever 'auto voltage' or 'auto clock' on as quite a few of them do now, set it a certain voltage/speed and off you go.
If you suspect it's the graphics card (which it sounds from your sleuthing that it may be related) - try running it at a lower resolution and texture levels and even vsync on for an hour - that way it won't be pulling as much juice from the PSU, see if it has more stability that way. You could always underclock it as well using MSI afterburner just to see.
Also a question on how you are powering the card, do you have each 8 pin plug on a seperate connector to the PSU? You haven't done anything like a y-splitter or anything like that?

[Jace007]

Sorted - In the end it was the PSU it blew, While having the PC on for 25mins there was 'pop' sound and then next thing smoke was coming out the back of it.
Got a new EVGA 750w G2 SuperNova From Scan.co.uk comes with a 10years Warranty. - thanks for the help guys

[KeyboardDemon]

Glad you got it sorted.

For future reference there are two versions of Memtest86, make sure you test with Memtest86+ and run the test for minimum 12 hours/8 cycles, whichever happens first. I had an issue where even after multiple cycles on Memtest86 I was getting no errors but as soon as I ran Memtest86+ for 12 hours my system found 226 errors with my RAM.

I have the same PSU, I nearly bought the 850w version but a friend talked some sense into me. It has some excellent reviews and the 10 years warranty is awesome, just make sure you register the PSU to get this.