Computer doing hard shut-off randomly during play

[arquebus]

I'm fairly sure I can rule out a CPU or GPU overheating issue, as I've got other programs/games that beat the @%$# out of my computer as much as 7 Days does, and they don't cause the computer to suddenly shut off. (Not shut down - shut OFF.) My temps are good, nothing is overclocked, the fans are clear and running as they should.

 

I figure it's a long shot to ask if anyone has any suggestions on what to check here, as 99.999% of the time it's an overheating issue so I expect people to just say, "Trust me, it's overheating." But I'm ever hopeful...

[SylenThunder]

Trust me, 7 Days is more CPU intensive than just about any other game you play. We've found more weak PSU's than I can shake a stick at. If your PC is doing a hard shut down like that, it's most likely the PSU.

[arquebus]

Well I also play X4: Foundations, which is on a par with 7 Days as far as CPU usage, and brings my temps up even higher than 7 Days (by about 10 degrees - 7 Days gets me to around 60 but X4 sometimes peaks at 72). But if I'm understanding you correctly, the PSU could be shutting down under a high voltage load, unrelated to temperature?

 

This PC has been running 7 Days just fine for 2 years, and only started having this problem with the current build. So while it is obviously possible that the PSU is coincidentally starting to crap out at the same time that the new alpha drops, it seems strange to me that there is no other circumstance that brings it down.

[Beelzybub]

@arquebus It's very likely your power supply. That's the primary candidate for a shutdown.

What CPU and GPU? (what are your system specs?) Check how old the psu is and it's rated

wattage.

You can test your psu by running prime95 and furmark at the same time to stress both CPU

and GPU. Run prime95 with fewer cores than your total so that Furmark has some

cycles to work with. If your psu is bad that test should shut the computer down.

 

You could try vsync on, and lower settings to reduce power use by the gpu and cpu, but

that's a long shot. Maybe blowing some dust off the Power Supply will help, but generally not

unless it's really dirty.

[Star69]

I always have a second power supply around....you get can a cheap one for testing for little money. Swap it out and see if the game crashes. I’m not good at using multimeters but if you are, there are tutorials out there where you can check voltages on the rails. To me trying a second power supply is easiest.

[arquebus]

Ok, I will check the power supply and use those tools to test. My system is a pre-built HP Pavilion 580-130, Ryzen 5 1400 and Radeon 580, with no changed parts. The computer is about 3 years old. If it is the power supply that sounds like a relatively cheap/easy swap, so I'm hoping that's what it is!

 

Thanks for the advice everyone!

 

 

[Fox]

Pre-builds ALWAYS have the worst quality and low wattage rated PSUs in them. So if what you have is stock, then odds are, there's your problem. If it was a random restart or BSOD, then I'd maybe suggest ram issues, but a complete power off is almost guaranteed a PSU failure. You need to also keep in mind that the capacitors in any PSU lose efficiency over time and therefore will consume more and more power as the years go by, reducing the capabilities of it. The better quality power supplies have solid state capacitors which add a lot more life and efficiency to them, but you'll never see that in a pre-built system.

 

Given your current hardware, if you don't plan on buying a new system any time soon, then I'd suggest going with a 80+ or 80+ bronze rating PSU that has the same motherboard connector design as the one you already have (pre-built systems will often have unique motherboard connectors for no reason other than to irritate their customers), but with 100 watts higher rating than the one you already have and you'll be fine for another 5+ years with that system.

[Liesel Weppen]

1 hour ago, arquebus said:

My system is a pre-built HP Pavilion 580-130, Ryzen 5 1400 and Radeon 580, with no changed parts.

According to google this PC has a 300W PSU.

The TDP of your CPU if 65W and your GPU is 185W. So together already 250W. That's JUST TDP NOT real power draw! And note that hard disks, connected usb-devices, the mainboard itself and fans, etc also needs power! So one ssd is +5-10W, each fan is additional 3-5W, the motherboard itself might use 20-30W, each RAM-Module uses up to 5W... Can you do the math? Comes very close, doesn't it?

If i look at real tests, a RX580 can draw up to 320W on its own in temporarily peaks. Compare that to your 300W PSU! And yes, exactly those only short burst power requirements will cause your computer to shut down.

Even if your PSU would be capable to handle this from its pure wattage, lets say it has 500W, often cheap PSUs can't handle fast changes in power draw. Lets assume your GPU goes from 70W idle to 320W full load in few milliseconds, your PSU may be able to provide 500W in theory, but it can't switch fast enough -> PC turns off.

 

The system you have is calculated right on the edge based just on pure the overal 300W PSU. It will work if something demands your CPU just 50W and the GPU just 200W but if you cause suddenly heavy load on BOTH, that may cause your CPU 70W (REAL, not just TDP!) and the GPU 300W in parallel-> PC turns off.

Might work fine for dozens of programs, but still may fail on programms that cause more load.

[SylenThunder]

56 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

According to google this PC has a 300W PSU.

The TDP of your CPU if 65W and your GPU is 185W. So together already 250W. That's JUST TDP NOT real power draw! And note that hard disks, connected usb-devices, the mainboard itself and fans, etc also needs power! So one ssd is +5-10W, each fan is additional 3-5W, the motherboard itself might use 20-30W, each RAM-Module uses up to 5W... Can you do the math? Comes very close, doesn't it?

If i look at real tests, a RX580 can draw up to 320W on its own in temporarily peaks. Compare that to your 300W PSU! And yes, exactly those only short burst power requirements will cause your computer to shut down.

Even if your PSU would be capable to handle this from its pure wattage, lets say it has 500W, often cheap PSUs can't handle fast changes in power draw. Lets assume your GPU goes from 70W idle to 320W full load in few milliseconds, your PSU may be able to provide 500W in theory, but it can't switch fast enough -> PC turns off.

 

The system you have is calculated right on the edge based just on pure the overal 300W PSU. It will work if something demands your CPU just 50W and the GPU just 200W but if you cause suddenly heavy load on BOTH, that may cause your CPU 70W (REAL, not just TDP!) and the GPU 300W in parallel-> PC turns off.

Might work fine for dozens of programs, but still may fail on programms that cause more load.

Yep, that's pretty standard for a pre-built HP/Acer/Dell system. Couple years ago we picked up a pre-build Acer. First thing I did was drop a 750W power supply in it.

Hell HP under-powers the Alienware systems so much it isn't even funny. Not to mention the piss-poor cooling solutions they use. It's really an abomination to what Alienware originally was before HP purchased them.

[Fox]

24 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

Yep, that's pretty standard for a pre-built HP/Acer/Dell system. Couple years ago we picked up a pre-build Acer. First thing I did was drop a 750W power supply in it.

Hell HP under-powers the Alienware systems so much it isn't even funny. Not to mention the piss-poor cooling solutions they use. It's really an abomination to what Alienware originally was before HP purchased them.

Alienware = Dell. HP = Compaq.

[SylenThunder]

17 minutes ago, Fox said:

Alienware = Dell. HP = Compaq.

Right. Still the same though.  Dell and HP screw things up equally bad from the client-facing services. I mix them up quite often. >.>

 

[Beelzybub]

How lame, they put a 300 W power supply in a machine with a RX 580 which can use well over that. Wth are they thinking?

They should give you a refund.

[Star69]

And you don't need to buy top of the line power supplies. As mentioned earlier, bronze rating is just fine, I haven't priced them lately but I would bet way less than $100 and definitely worth the purchase. Don't get another 300 or 400 watt...like SylenThunder said, go with at least a 750. This will breathe some extra life in your rig before needing to upgrade. Let us know how it goes.

[SylenThunder]

Yeah, around here you can grab a Crucial 750W bronze for about 75-90 and a gold is about $110-125. The gold will have a better warranty, and won't degrade as fast, but the difference is negligible with the Crucial units. Used to be their bronze series were pretty trash. couldn't get one to last more than a few months.  Been running a few systems on them for a couple years now though.

[arquebus]

I will look into it, thanks everyone!

 

So far I guess I've been lucky with the PSU that's in there now, never had any issues until this month, but it does make a lot of sense that the PSU would be the limiting factor.

 

I guess this also means I'll have to figure out how to do the part swap... I used to do this all the time back in the 90s (on Macs) but the idea of digging around inside my PC is a bit more daunting.

[Fox]

3 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

Right. Still the same though.  Dell and HP screw things up equally bad from the client-facing services. I mix them up quite often. >.>

 

Well, according to Linus Tech Tips experience, HP offers a far better service than Dell / Alienware. You can check out the cool series here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz7WMF4wWko&list=PL8mG-RkN2uTzs37XwpDdQbYMLBOEImvzq&ab_channel=LinusTechTips

 

 

They really showed how incredibly horrible Dell really is compared to HP.

2 hours ago, Beelzybub said:

How lame, they put a 300 W power supply in a machine with a RX 580 which can use well over that. Wth are they thinking?

They should give you a refund.

Pre-built machines are only ever about offering the bare minimum they can get away with while charging the maximum they can get away with while still making it look like a good deal. This is the reason why so many of us build our own machines. I should say that some pre-built machines are better than others, but overall, they all cut corners to some degree.

1 hour ago, Star69 said:

And you don't need to buy top of the line power supplies. As mentioned earlier, bronze rating is just fine, I haven't priced them lately but I would bet way less than $100 and definitely worth the purchase. Don't get another 300 or 400 watt...like SylenThunder said, go with at least a 750. This will breathe some extra life in your rig before needing to upgrade. Let us know how it goes.

I disagree with it being 750 watts, unless the costs are near the same as a 400+ watts PSU, in which case ignore me. He's got a very non-demanding computer setup with low range performing hardware. There's no reason to go overkill like that with a PSU costing more than most of the parts inside. 400 - 450 watts is plenty for his current PC setup. Now if he was planning on building his own computer in the near future or something, then sure, go overkill so you can save money later by not needing to buy another PSU for the new rig.

[Fox]

1 hour ago, arquebus said:

I guess this also means I'll have to figure out how to do the part swap... I used to do this all the time back in the 90s (on Macs) but the idea of digging around inside my PC is a bit more daunting.

It's not too bad if you're patient and take your time to think things through. Maybe watch some Youtube videos on PSU installation for quick reference to get an idea how to do it. But the key thing is to just take your time. And also remember that the large motherboard plug is difficult to disconnect and a bit difficult to reconnect... so play close attention to that one specifically as you don't want to push too hard on the motherboard trying to plug it in or forget to squeeze the tab before unplugging it, etc.

 

EDIT: wtf? this post didn't merge with the other one.... Moderators?!?! lol

[Vampirenostra]

For me the correct for this system would be like 500W, just to keep things on the safe side, never reaching the peak capacity, so never overheating and keeping it quiet. As if there is an upgrade planned later on - go for 700-750W, nothing lover than a bronze, as it simply makes no sense difference in price is irrelevant. There are plenty of PSU manufacturers today for all sorts and prices, just pick one from recommendations and you'll be fine.

[Liesel Weppen]

Another solution might be to undervolt your RX 580. The RX 400 and 500 series are known to work good with undervolting. Should be possible to lower the power usage of that graphics card from 185W to like 120W with just losing little peak performance (may be like 5%).

 

There are lots of tutorials out there how this can be done.

[Vampirenostra]

On 11/19/2020 at 12:34 PM, Liesel Weppen said:

Another solution might be to undervolt your RX 580. The RX 400 and 500 series are known to work good with undervolting. Should be possible to lower the power usage of that graphics card from 185W to like 120W with just losing little peak performance (may be like 5%).

 

There are lots of tutorials out there how this can be done.

Man, guy just notices he doesn't really remember how to swap a PSU and here you come in with proposal of undervaluing his GPU))) Guess this is a bit overhead for him))

[Beelzybub]

8 hours ago, Vampirenostra said:

this is a bit overhead for him

Not necessarily, some people are more comfortable with software than hardware.

[Fox]

6 hours ago, Beelzybub said:

Not necessarily, some people are more comfortable with software than hardware.

Hardware is easy, software is constantly changing and is near impossible to keep up unless it's your profession or passion. Even I suck at it.

[Data]

also make sure that theres enough amps on the +12v, that is sometimes overlooked., thinking that the watts is enough, you can have a 1000w psu but if the +12v are 20amps and your gfx card needs at least 25amps, then itll work for a while but overstrain your psu and then at some point can go bang

 

mine did!!

[Liesel Weppen]

11 hours ago, Vampirenostra said:

Man, guy just notices he doesn't really remember how to swap a PSU and here you come in with proposal of undervaluing his GPU))) Guess this is a bit overhead for him))

I didn't say he has to do it, i just mentioned it as a another solution that doesn't require buying any new hardware.

 

I guess if he can't swap his psu, nor undervolt his graphics card, he has to buy a completely new PC.

[Daemonjax]

Power supply, or motherboard issue.  It's one of the two.  

 

Usually, a bad PSU will cause a "whine" sound when under load.