Crashes and odd behavoir

[sakoki]

Hi, a while back I ran into an issue where my PC would sometimes be connected to my LAN, but not the internet, despite the internet working on other devices. I paid no further attention to this because it was a minor inconvenience that could be fixed by simply restarting the PC.

 

About a month later, my PC started occasionally freezing when in DotA 2 (a video game), ceasing to react to any input. I had to force shut it down, then after restarting, I often had no internet, so I had to restart again. I still don't know if these two issues are connected, but since they often occur together, I thought I'd mention that. These freezes became more common, and were joined by two further issues. First, DotA 2 would sometimes just close down, seemingly without impacting the PC in any way. However, this would typically soon be followed by a freeze or, after a while, the PC crashing. This would look as though the power was turned off - no bluescreen, no freezing, just the PC being instantly shut down.

 

I continued to use it like this for a while, until eventually, my PC shut down (in the manner described above), but when I tried to restart, it immediately shut down again, before anything could even appear on the monitor. I observed the motherboard and noticed the CPU_LED flashing red once as I pressed the power button, and once more when the PC crashed immediately after. I after trying this for a few times, I left the PC untouched for the day. The next day it worked again.

 

Since then, I've been using my PC sparingly, only attempting to play two times. Both times it worked for a while before crashing. Once it crashed after CS:GO (another video game), once after DotA 2, in both cases immediately after a game had ended (as I was loading out of the map and back to the main menu).

 

In summary, my issues are:

• DotA 2 closing down randomly (something that didn't happen before the other issues emerged).
• My PC freezing during a game of DotA 2
• My PC crashing during, or more commonly right after a game of CS:GO or DotA 2
• My PC connecting to LAN but not the internet, typically after being crashing or being force shut down, or after extended periods of it being shut down

Please note that these issues may not be limited to DotA 2 (and CS:GO), I simply almost exclusively played DotA 2, so that's where the issues occured.

 

I've considered a few causes, but none of them make much sense to me:

• CPU thermals seem unlikely, since they shouldn't cause my game to randomly close down (right?)
• PSU issues seem unlikely, because - again, they shouldn't cause my game to randomly close down
• RAM issues seem unlikely, because the problems seem to escalate over multiple shut downs. Unless maybe it's RAM thermals? Is that a thing?

Something of note is that I'm suspecting voltage fluctuations may have occured in my power grid (this suspicion is based on issues with a TV), though I haven't been able to verify this yet, and it also doesn't seem like a great explanation for my issues.

 

My specs are:

GPU: ASUS DirectCU II OC R9 290x

MoBo: ASUS M5 A97 R2.0

CPU: AMD FX-8350

RAM: G.Skill RipJawsX 2x4

PSU: Corsair AX760

 

Although I am thankful for any and all advice, my main focus is on fixing the freezes/crashes. The network issue, if unconnected to the others, is just a minor inconvenience.

 

Update: I've taken a few measures which I thought might fix these issues, but to no avail:

I've cleaned my CPU and applied new thermal paste in hopes that it might be a thermals issue.

I found some errors pertaining to my GPU in the windows event log, and even found a lot of people complaining about similar crashes associated with these errors. However, when I updated my drivers (which was said to fix the issue), the errors disappeared but the problems remained.

I've plugged the PC into a different power grid in case voltage fluctuations were the issue, still no change.

I'm really at a loss...

[SubTract]

If I had to take a stab in the dark I'd start by checking your power connectors and then even replacing the power supply. 

 

Given it's ability to insta crash that leads me to believe it's more likely a power issue than a thermal issue. Booting or running high performance applications draw a lot of power, these being the most likely time to be affected by a power problem.

 

Do you happen to have another system you can test the power supply of?

[sakoki]

On 6/7/2019 at 3:51 PM, SubTract said:

If I had to take a stab in the dark I'd start by checking your power connectors and then even replacing the power supply. 

 

Given it's ability to insta crash that leads me to believe it's more likely a power issue than a thermal issue. Booting or running high performance applications draw a lot of power, these being the most likely time to be affected by a power problem.

 

Do you happen to have another system you can test the power supply of?

Sadly not really. Could the freezing also be caused by power issues? And could the problem be with my power grid, rather than the PSU? It's rather new, and I haven't had any problems with corsair PSUs before.

[sakoki]

I've now applied new thermal paste, since that was the easiest cause to test. When I tried to play to test my PC, it still crashed, and could not be turned on again. After connecting it to a different power grid, it started up again, but still crashed my game twice and the entire computer once within a span of maybe half an hour. Still, it could be turned on again even after crashing completely, so that felt like an improvement, but also confused me further.

 

I've checked whether it crashes when my RAM usage goes above 50% (since I figured that maybe one of the RAM sticks could be defective), but nope, it remains fully operational above 50% RAM usage as well.

 

I've come to believe that the three issues (game crashing, PC freezing, PC crashing) are connected, since it really feels like they happen almost interchangeably now. This further complicates matters, as I cannot imagine a faulty PSU causing my game to close. (That shouldn't happen, right?)

 

Edit: Oh, I've also checked the power connectors, and they seem to all be in place. Is there some way I can check the functionality of my PSU (that doesn't require a second system or PSU)?

[sakoki]

As stated in the update, I've eliminated a GPU driver issue which could supposedly cause problems similar to mine, but the crashes and freezes remain. I've also checked the ASUS GPU tweak logs for any irregularities, and found none. I would really appreciate any and all further advice.