Computer completely turns off.

Hello all,

I am new to the forums and unfortunately my first post will be me looking for some help. I recently built a new rig. Install went fine. I installed Windows 7, video drivers, bios drivers, etc. I was able to play games on max settings with no problems. However, on the second day of using the comp, while playing World of Warcraft, the computer randomly completely turned off like somebody pulled the cord. It immediately booted back up like I had reset it. However, I didn't have any problems for a good 2 or 3 hours of more gaming on WoW. Later that night I got on to play Rift, and after about an hour or so of play, the same problem happened. I figured I'd run Rift again and monitor my temperatures. The CPU temp was staying between 40-60 degrees Celsius and the GPU was hovering around 70 degrees Celsius. The computer powered down again about 45 mins later, and when it was restarting it powered down 3 times while trying to reboot. All the parts are new and any advice would be greatly appreciated so I can go about finding and fixing the problem and enjoying my new rig.

The computer's specs:

i7 960 3.2 ghz processor
EVGA GTX 580 1.6gb graphic card
Asus Rampage III Formula motherboard
Corsair 750AX Power Supply
1TB SATA3 HD
12gb G.Skill Ripjaw DDR3 1600 RAM
Corsair H60 CPU cooler
Corsair Graphite 600t case

How good is your case ventilation and what are your chipset and motherboard component temps like? There's more to good system cooling than a good CPU cooler. What is your case make and model and how many/how big are your case fans? What is the cable/wire housekeeping like? What about heatsinks on the chipset and mosfets? Maybe a pic of the inside of your case would help.

Case ventilation seems to be fine to me. The case is a Corsair Graphite 600t. Almost all cables are ran out behind the motherboard through grommets built into the case. There are 2 200mm fans, one in the front as an intake fan and one at the top as an exhaust fan. Right now just idling and browsing the net, temp readouts from SpeedFan are as follows:

GPU 41C System 40C CPU 41C AUX 41C HD0 33C MB 40C ICH 64C

Electrical readouts: Vcore : 0.94V +12V: 11.56V AVcc: 3.34V CPU: 0.93V CPU PLL: 1.81V QPI/DRAM Core: 1.15V IOH: 1.14V IOH PCIE: 1.51V ICH: 1.11V DRAM Bus: 1.60V 3.3V: 3.33V 5V: 5.05V 12V: 12.31V

I tried my best when routing cables to keep everything in front as clean as possible. There is very little wiring around the motherboard itself. I can take a picture if you want. Motherboard is how it was when I took it out of the box. Not sure what heatsinks are like on the mosfets and chipset.

I took a look at the board on new egg. It seems to be sinked quite well. What about your ram? I would run the Prime95 blend test for several hours. The blend test stresses the ram quite a bit. Then I would run Memtest86+ overnight.

I assume from your first post the CPU is not overclocked and the core voltage is set to auto. Correct?

trents said:

I took a look at the board on new egg. It seems to be sinked quite well. What about your ram? I would run the Prime95 blend test for several hours. The blend test stresses the ram quite a bit. Then I would run Memtest86+ overnight.

I assume from your first post the CPU is not overclocked and the core voltage is set to auto. Correct?

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I did not overclock the CPU and everything in BIOS was left at default. So the RAM could be the culprit? I will run those tests. Anything else I can try?

Kove said:

I did not overclock the CPU and everything in BIOS was left at default. So the RAM could be the culprit? I will run those tests. Anything else I can try?

Click to expand...

I would run everything on auto settings as my computer does this when an overclock is unstable. My old asus board also had this issue because the chipset got too hot, but that was a known issue with my board.

It sounds like you have everything at stock. Good luck.

Oh I did change one thing in the BIOS. It had my RAM set as 1066 MHz but its supposed to be 1600 so I bumped it up in the BIOS. Could that be the issue?

In my experience RAM issues are attended by a BSOD. A faulty overclock would also cause a BSOD but could cause that rough start issue.

This certainly sounds like a bad powersupply issue I had about 6 years ago. I bought a brand new high end Antec PSU and started getting random shutdowns, exactly like you're experiencing (in fact I could probably find that thread too). At that same time I had also bought an Asus board open-box from the egg. I naturally thought the motherboard was the culprit since it just couldn't have been the brand new awesome PSU. I ended up buying another new board and wouldn't you know it, same issue. I finally broke down and used my old PSU on the new board and had no issues...

I notice that you had PSU voltages listed. I assume those are from a multimeter but regardless, intermittent power issues would cause this issue. My money is on the power supply.

And if it was a thermal shutdown, it probably won't turn on again until you disconnect the power cord from the PSU and plug it in again.

Well I just got home and tried booting up. Upon booting, it gave a message on the screen that overclock failed. It had an option to reset bios values to default, but I hadn't overclocked anything at all other than changing the RAM speed from 1066 to 1600. It then went to check the memory since I opted to use the windows memory checker and while doing that it just shut down entirely without rebooting and pressing the power button doesn't start it back up. I have to unplug the power supply and replug it in for it to power on. The next time I powered up it died at the second screen showing my drives before bootup. Does this point to power supply issues still?

How does it work setting your memory back to 1066MHz

I would run mem86

I was just able to boot in and sit in Windows for like 5 minutes under default BIOS settings which has memory at 1066 until it powered off again. I can't run any tests at this point in time since it's unable to stay powered up for any amount of time. The problem has gotten progressively worse since last night. Last night i was able to at least do things and actually get on games for 1hr + and now it can barely stay powered on.

I'm guessing it's your PSU, because if you have a defective one that's what they do they just turn off or blow up.

Also look for a short's in plugs and wiring also coolers.

Try clearing cmos and booting. If it still happens there is either a short as stated above or the psu is dying. It could be another faulty component such as ram or cpu, but not likely. Lets hope if it is the psu that it doesn't damage anything else.

One thing you can try that will be time consuming is to take everything out of the case (or just unhook everything like panel switches, front usb and such) because there could be a shot almost anywhere. I had a case that the hdd led was bad and caused it to not boot.

If you have everything out of the case and just use the bare minimum (eg. one memory stick, just the cpu and hdd boot drive, and video card that's it) with no extras and it still happens you are looking at a new psu.

I would check with http://badcaps.net

I went to best buy to look for another PSU, but all they had were non-modular corsair psu and a thermal take tr2 rx 850w psu that is modular. I looked up some reviews on the thermaltake one and it looks like it is a piece of junk, so I didn't get it. I will try to go to some other computer stores tomorrow to try and find my exact power supply.

do you have another psu that you could use to test? As stated above there may be a short somewhere in the system. Check the cabling behin the board to make sure no connectors are hitting the case or bare metal. Try everything out of the case with bare components plugged in (hdd and one stik ram) and see if the issue replicates.

Unfortunately, I don't have another psu lying around. I will check the cabling behind the cast to make sure nothing is touching bare metal or the case itself. The computer boots up now and will sit idle on the desktop for a while. It stayed there for a good 10 minutes earlier before powering down. If it was a short, wouldn't it crash a lot quicker?

Unplugged the front USB/firewire connections. Computer has been idling at desktop for over 15 mins now with no issue. I'll repost if it crashes again.

Just powered off after about 40 minutes of staying on.