Computer Issues

There isnt a way to see some sort of "log" of what triggered the shutdown? Seems like that would be a useful tool...

I had a problem with my harddrives and with your guys's help, it's been all sorted out (knock on wood). However, I got a new problem. My computer hard resets during gaming. No BSoD, no beep; it's like I pressed the 'reset' button on the case. But it's only during games!

Basic desktop, 1080p videos, google chroming with a zillion tabs, no problem. Hours and hours, never restart.

Hearthstone, same, hours and hours, no restart.

Skyrim, it happened twice over a few days of playing. This happened first and I actually thought it was a problem with Skyrim, only since I stopped Skyriming and played other games did I get it.

Heroes of the storm, CONSTANT. I started last week and it happened every few games, but the past few days I'll crash within 2 minutes of starting a game, and sometimes sooner.

Witcher 3...this one is weird. I played it for like 45 minutes, going through the intro area, doing a few fights, lots of dialogue, zoning in and out, and I had only one crash during that time. Then, I was in some random field outside a town (no different than the rest), I approach a group of 3 bad guys, saved, and attacked. Crash. Even though the Quick save is almost instant, the crash actually invalidated the save and the game wouldn't load. I used a previous auto save, went there, saved, waited, engaged, and crashed before I could kill them. I've loaded it 4 times since then and each time, my computer restarts.

I'm at a loss. No changes have been made to my computer whatsoever. I did update to the latest video drivers 2 days back, but that made no difference. I ran a RAM test and got no errors. I've used RealTemp to watch my CPU heat, and it goes to about 81, but no higher. I haven't yet checked my video card, but it's never had an issue before. The fans are at a constant speed, both are in fact operational. I really don't know what to do! Any advice would be appreciated, because besides Hearthstone, I can't play any games.

Ok so about that 81...I took this pic two days back. I was gonna ask for help dealing with the program, because within some 5-10 minutes of turning on my computer, everything would slow to a crawl (games, video, Chrome, even searching in the Windows start bar), at which point I'd open task manager and kill this process. It'd stay off until I restarted my computer, so I kinda forgot about it for a few days until I decided to look into a permanent solution and found that it's 100% uninstallable. So it's out.

minor edit -- I realize now that the "13:16:00" is not a timer showing 13 minutes, but the actual time, so this picture is showing essentially a 1 minute window, which would reflect my experience with the computer becoming slogged down until I could end the NAT program.

Anyhow, that's gone, and this morning I gave my games another whirl. I got through an entire match of HotS, while alt-tabbing and checking temps, and they barely broke into 50. So then I loaded up Witcher, and played for about 30 or 40 minutes. The temps got to just about 70, but no higher. I thought all was fine, killed lots of monsters, advanced the quests, listened to dialogue, and after that 40 minutes or so, I approached one random bad guy, and as I swung my sword my system restarted. So here I am.

I don't use a case, I haven't used one with this setup for like 3 years now. I touched the video card and it's not hot. Could my CPU have been partially fried by that one process? And now as I type this my CPU is idling in the low 30s, as normal (since removing that program).

minor edit -- and I went back into Witcher 3 with GPU Temp running, in the same area as before, I'm just running around the shore, swinging my sword, casting magic, jumping like an ADD WoW player for about 5 minutes, and there's no problem. I walked over to the guy, kill him in a few hits, and my computer crashes. The temps I saw only got into the low 50s for my GPU.

Why don't you use a case? It protects components from all the atmospheric shit like dust. Additionally, cases provide cooling in a very specific path. If we take cases off the servers at work we have to put down foam on the top or the fans won't hit the CPU... you may think you're helping temps running it open, but you may be making it worse. There's a lot more reasons to house a computer than just looks alone.

Have you checked the thermal paste on the CPU? After awhile of hot temperatures it could seep out and off the chip - this happened to my laptop.

The most common reason that a computer just instantly shuts down and reboots is overheating, and to me it looks like your CPU is overheating.

Your GPU doesn't appear to be overheating, but your CPU temps are really really high. If you run a home fan really close and pointed directly at the CPU does it still get high like that?

Essentially that program was probably using a lot of processing power and in turn your processor was getting hot. It wouldn't partially fry a processor, but it might have brought the issue out.

I did live in Korea, and when I uninstalled that NAT program I noticed that it was installed in October 2014. Oddly, only like 5 days ago did it start doing the CPU overdrive shit, and now it is 100% off my computer.

I had my computer on for the past 24 hours, with not a game played, and not a computer problem. I just opened Witcher, walked over to a bad guy, and the game crashed as I clicked to swing. I'm talking, 25 seconds tops from clicking the program button to computer restart. Maybe even just 20 seconds. Is it even possible for the CPU to overheat that fast? The heatsink is still screwed on, nothing has changed in years.

I just reset the CMOS to go back to 3300 ghz and loaded the game back up. Killed the monster, ran up the road, talked to an old lady who asked me to bust down her door (not a euphemism unfortunately) and the game crashed before I could try. I've got a fan pointed at my computer too.

I also just ranthis Intel CPU testand it passed, but, I was watching my temps and the last 20% the temps were in the high 80s. Celsius. I only let it continue because it was almost finished, and it did complete successfully and the temps dropped immediately, but still, not encouraging. It was extra intense because RealTemp was playing the submarine-esque warning claxon alerting me to high temps. Now as I write this I realize that that does NOT happen during the games, so my CPU can't be overheating in that regard, right?

A Cpu can overheat it just seconds if it's doing a lot of work (gaming)

It would be worth it for you to look at the thermal paste situation.

Ok it's totally not a heat issue. First, I did replace the thermal paste, and there's no noticeable change. Witcher 3 still crashed within seconds of opening it. Second, I had the bright idea to open up Heroes of the Storm in windowed mode so I can not even worry about alt-tabbing but just look at the heat live while playing. I open it up, I'm poking around the store, the character select screen, etc. My temps don't even budge, they're in the high 30s low 40s. Not two minutes later, computer restarts. Temps never changed.

I did the RAM test earlier, and the Intel CPU test...what other tests can I do to try and narrow this down? I don't even know what piece of my computer to replace to fix it :/

There's going to be a part number somewhere on that fan. Google search that fan part number itself. You are right, it should be a very easy swap to do yourself.

I did this to my 6970 and it worked great. Thinking of doing the same with my 970 strix since it's pretty noisy under load.