PC randomly loses power and restarts.

[Rahnak]

Hey guys, I could use a little bit of help here.

Ever since I swapped my MSI B450 Carbon Pro for a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra that my system randomly reboots. There's no BSOD (and yes, I have the option to automatically restart on system failure unchecked), it just freezes for half a second and reboots. I haven't been able to pinpoint a cause for this, as far as I can tell it's completely random. Most of the times it happens when I'm not even using the computer, sometimes when I'm browsing or doing light tasks, a few during gaming. There have been 36 restarts since mid December 2019 as the event viewer logs show. There's also nothing that indicates causes. Screenshots of the list of errors and logs of the last time it happened.


This is a really pain in the ass to test because sometimes there's a really long period of time between restarts, as it shows on the log, I had no issues whatsoever in July despite longer usage than normal.

I have a few suspects but I'm not even sure if some of them would cause power loses/restarts. So I want to read some opinions before I start replacing or RMA-ing stuff.

1. RAM
I could never get this kit to work at rated speeds without loading the XMP profile on either board. On the MSI I could get it to work using slightly worse timings, on the Gigabyte it's even worse. I've read somewhere XMP profiles can cause some instability on AMD systems but I'm not sure they could cause these types of issues. Isn't it typically a BSOD?
Also, I ran a memtest for 8 or so hours one day to see it there were any problems, but it didn't catch anything.

2. 8-pin connector
When I replaced the board this bad boy was a real struggle to connect. My PSU has in-cable capacitors and the fit was tight, must have taken me a few minutes to get it on and I guess I could've damaged in the process? Again, I'm not sure if a bad 8-pin would cause random reboots (wouldn't they be more likely at CPU load, if anything?) but hey, it's power related. I could also use some input on this. I took a picture of the said cable and it's awkward angle.


3. Faulty board
If all else fails it could just be a faulty board, I guess.

So, if anyone has any ideas what the culprit could be I'd really appreciate the help.

Thanks!

EDIT: Mistakenly called my board Aorus Pro rather than Ultra.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I would start by swapping in a known good PSU - not because you had problems installing this one but simply because you need to verify your system is getting good, clean and stable power.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

sounds like PSU issue

 

[Rahnak]

You guys think it could be the 8pin cable causing it or the whole unit? It's still fairly new, it'll be 3 years old in November.

I still have my old Corsair from the previous build in storage, I'll try to replace it today and test drive for a month to see it fixes it.

 

[de.das.dude]

If the PSU one doesnt solve it,
Try to rollback any recent windows updates. I had my system freezing randomly only when browsing the internet. Sometimes it would freeze on boot as well and crash.
I reverted back the updates and it did the trick.

 

[Rahnak]

Finished swaping the PSU. I'll monitor the situation, but I've gone a month a half without a reboot before so it'll take a while before I can say for certain if this was the issue.

It's going to be torture though. My old PSU might as well have been a fanless model, I don't think the fan ever spun. This one is so loud. By far the loudest thing on the PC right now.

 

[Caring1]

Read through the following thread to see you aren't the only one with issues with a Gigabyte X570.

Aorus X570 Master

Hello people ! sorry about my English !! I have a problem with the Aorus X570 master, I set everything up correctly, I installed Windows, all ok! The problem started when I was downloading is memory latency (g-skill 3600 cl17) for cl16, I selected the option to save and restart, did not come...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Waldorf]

Gb has issues with their boards since they introduced dual bios, so its affecting intel and amd, but still wont acknowledge that they have an issue in their forums.

if it happens again, try the F20 bios (only one i got to work without issues), but make sure to use efiflash to update, incl clearing DMI and updating backup bios,
reboot and qflash (incl backup bios) to remove any leftover data from previous bios (they seem to not clear any existing data in qflash/flashback mode corrupting settings).

 

[PLSG08]

Try the PSU. had this issue a while back and swapping out the PSU fixed it for me

 

[AltCapwn]

Can you please give details on the messages of kernel power?

 

[micropage7]

have you checked your heatsink, could be from PSU or VRM but since you have changed the board we can assume it's not from the board

btw what peripherals that you connect to mainboard, vga card, soundcard or something

 

[Waldorf]

@micropage7
(lol, assumptions are really helpful for troubleshooting)
might wanna start reading all answers posted, as you clearly missed caring1/mine.

this CAN (and unless defective psu, most likely is) be coming from the board,
as there are lots of ppl having trouble with Gb boards (that use dual bios), including myself.

when i swapped the board the problems (cold boot/sudden reboots) went away, even when using the same psu/cpu/gpu/drives/cooling,
and only (dos) flashing both bios chips fixed those issues, so i know the board is not broken (hw).

 

[micropage7]

@micropage7
(lol, assumptions are really helpful for troubleshooting)
might wanna start reading all answers posted, as you clearly missed caring1/mine.

this CAN (and unless defective psu, most likely is) be coming from the board,
as there are lots of ppl having trouble with Gb boards (that use dual bios), including myself.

when i swapped the board the problems (cold boot/sudden reboots) went away, even when using the same psu/cpu/gpu/drives/cooling,
and only (dos) flashing both bios chips fixed those issues, so i know the board is not broken (hw).

haha, i read that
sometimes people just miss something then take a verdict
but if everything got checked, the left one is from the board and like you said Gb with dual bios that bring the trouble

 

[Paganstomp]

Seasonic has warned of a compatibility issue between its Focus Plus-branded power supplies and selected Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, potentially resulting in system shutdowns during periods of heavy load - and its test information suggests it has known about the issue since January. <--- Nov 22, 2018

Google...

 

[tabascosauz]

Seasonic has warned of a compatibility issue between its Focus Plus-branded power supplies and selected Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, potentially resulting in system shutdowns during periods of heavy load - and its test information suggests it has known about the issue since January. <--- Nov 22, 2018

Google...

Old issue that applies to the Strix GTX 970 and Vega cards. OP has a 480.

Reading...


@Rahnak if these errors have been this frequent, do /sfc scannow in Powershell and run a full chkdsk on the next restart. Chronic memory instability usually will manifest in Windows / disk corruption, and if you do indeed find filesystem errors in either test, you can probably eliminate all the other culprits aside from RAM. Sometimes RAM instability is subtle or situational dependent on thermal or load conditions, doesn't always result in a BSOD.

For RAM testing, run overnight or at least 8 runs of memtest86 from a USB stick to make sure there's nothing wrong with the DIMMs themselves, and follow it up with overnight or at least 400% coverage in HCI Memtest with enough instances to cover almost all of your memory capacity.

 

[rougal]

I've encountered almost similar problem before, pc just restarts randomly without any warnings at all. Even went and bought a new PSU, but the problem still happens. It turns out that my board has a faulty SATA controller, it turns that because the main system drive was connected the the faulty SATA port, and when a connection error occurs the pc will automatically restart because it can read the main system drive. the solution that I did was change my System drive to a different SATA port, and it works.

This is only a suggestion for u to try. Hope it works. If not, no harm done, right?

 

[Chomiq]

X570 elite here, the only time mine did it was when my ram oc wasn't stable. No BSOD, nada, just hard reset. Fixed the timings, no more.
But that would come up as soon as in the first 30 min of Memtest64, sometimes later. Also while playing anything memory intensive.

 

[Rahnak]

Thanks for all the input, I'll try to answer everyone in this post.

@Caring1 I'm aware there have been some issues with Gigabyte board to the point that there are new board revisions out and it's definitely on the suspects list. I just think there are some components I have to eliminate before I can point the finger at it and send it back for RMA.

@Fry178 I had forgotten all about BIOS updates.. I updated it to the last version available when I first got it and that was it, really. So I'm still on F11. There are 3 newer ones available. F12 which improves mem. compatibility, F20 which adds support for the XT line and a vulnerability fix and F21 which improves PCIe compatibility. I suppose I could try F20 out. I'm just on the fence about trying more than one thing at the same time. What do you think?

@PLSG08 I did swap the PSU last night. I'm on my older Corsair TX650 now. So far no problems, but that's not saying much.

@altcapwn There's no relevant information on the KernelPower entries, but here's a screen.


@micropage7 This board was an upgrade from a B450 board. I had no issues with the B450, I have reboots with this one. Every other component is the same.
As for peripherals, I'm running pretty barebones right now. On the back panel I have keyboard and mouse on the two top USB ports, wifi/bt antenna connected, single jack for the speakers, ethernet cable and display port on the GPU. Inside I have the typical front audio and usb3 (type A) connected as well as two SATA SSDs.

@Paganstomp I know about that, but like tabascosauz said, it doesn't relate to my GPU and I've had GPU/PSU together for nearly 3 years and the 9 months I've had the X570 board aside, my system was 100% stable.

@tabascosauz So I ran both of those. Sfc said it found some problems as per image below. I looked at the log file and it seems it's mostly folders being owned twice. I'll attach a txt file with the results if you want to have a look. I also ran chkdsk on boot by setting the drive dirty and it did it's thing but I've no idea if it found any problems or not. If it did, it didn't say.


I did run memtest86 once before, but I think it only did 4-5 runs and that took about 8ish hours I believe. Every subsequent run took longer than the previous, is that normal? During that test it didn't find any problems nor did it restart. How long does it typically take to do 8 runs?

@rougal Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely add that to the list of things to try.

@Chomiq I see. So that's confirmation that memory issues can cause hard resets. I wasn't sure they could. Mine are totally random though, not load related as far as I can tell. Maybe 6-8 at most have been during gaming, majority happen when I'm away from the computer.
The fact that I can't boot after manually setting the XMP timings on either board doesn't really speak well for this particular kit of mine, imo. It's surprising that it does work with the XMP profile.


Guys should I try more than one solution at a time, or stick to one thing until it fails before trying something else?

 

[Chomiq]

One at a time is the best. You've switched out the PSU, now verify if you still get reboots. If that's the case try next option.

Also do kernel 41 errors match the time when the actual hard reset occurred? In my case windows would log 41 even after normal power off with fast startup enabled. Had to disable fast startup to get rid of it.

 

[de.das.dude]

Keep trying one by one. do a stress test with the corsair psu and the other one to see if the original one fails with stress.

my cousin also had some weird issues with gigabyte boards. His LAN was conflicting with something. Sadly this is a common thing with gigabyte, which is the only thing keeping them back from becoming a top notch mobo maker. i would keep an eye on the board as well.

 

[Bill_Bright]

You guys think it could be the 8pin cable causing it or the whole unit?

No way to tell from here. But my guess would the unit. Cables and connectors typically don't cause "intermittent" problems - unless loose.

And I agree - one step at a time. Run with the spare Corsair for a week or two and see what happens before swapping anything else out.

 

[-The_Mask-]

Old issue that applies to the Strix GTX 970 and Vega cards. OP has a 480.

Those are two different problems with the Seasonic Focus serie. With the GTX 970 Strix it where black screens and/or freezes because of extremely high ripple from the 12V. The other problem was shutdown because of a low OCP trip point on the 12V. It causes the PSU to shutdown quite fast with high transient spikes, much more early then similar power supplies. But that wasn't with Vega only, it happens with all graphics cards with high transient spikes, which is every graphics card with a high power consumption.

 

[tabascosauz]

@Rahnak run some HCI memtest overnight. The free version limits you to 2-3GB per instance depending on the day, just run more instances of the program until you fill up your RAM leaving 1-2GB for Windows. Leave it on overnight, or at least run it to 400% completion. 200% is okay for memory instability, but might not catch IMC errors (probably not relevant to you).

Memtest86 is a good place to start if the kit is new to you to make sure there's nothing obviously wrong with the DIMMs, but it's time consuming and doesn't offer much as a useful tool for memory overclockers.

On Gigabyte you don't ever need to disable XMP if it works. You can do all your manual timings and voltage adjustments all while leaving XMP "On".

The multiple sfc errors suggest memory issue, but it's not a certainty. A lot of the ones that showed up for me on a long-term unstable RAM OC were file ownership-related. Let HCI find out whether it's really a memory issue, in which case there are a number of different things you can try.

How is the power grid in your area? Any potential for power quality issues? Do you use a UPS?

 

[Rahnak]

@tabascosauz I've downloaded HCI memtest and I'll run it tomorrow during the day. The computer is in my room and this old PSU is obnoxiously loud.

I didn't know you could do that. I thought as soon as you changed any parameter it would default to manual settings. Not that I think it would help, I couldn't even get the DRAM Calculator's safe settings to stick.

The power grid is good, I think. Hardly any power outages, probably once a year on average. As for the quality itself, I'm not sure how I could measure that. I don't have a UPS, just a power strip with surge protection.

Thanks for all the help. Still no issues to report.

 

[Waldorf]

@Rahnak
keep it running for now to exclude other things.
maybe get the memtest for usb stick (not running under win), usually takes less time as not much of ram is occupied by OS etc.
use rufus to make a bootable stick
memtest86
https://rufus.ie/

if reboots happen again, start with the F20 bios, but make sure to use efiflash with /C /DB (to clear existing DMI data/ update backup chip as well),
load defaults, reboot and qflash the bios update (incl backup chip), reboot and load defaults, reboot and change settings.
this was the only way i could fix the intermittent cold boot issue (completely dead unless unplugged for +30 min and cmos cleared),\
as well as the random reboots (sometimes within a few days, then nothing for weeks).
the F21 bios re-introduced the cold boot and some timing issues, so i went back to F20..