PC always turns itself off, only when playing certain part of Hitman: Absolution (no spoilers)

[Litargirio]

Here is a very strange issue that I have been having for well over two months. Basically, my PC outright turns itself off when I try to play (the beginning of) Part 3: Countdown of Hitman: Absolution. I can however play any other part of the same game without issues, and I also play all the other games that exist with no issues whatsoever, yet when I start Part 3: Countdown of this game, after walking around the roof for a bit, the PC shuts off less than a minute into the game.

 

Though I was almost able to beat this part of the game once without issues, it was only after I died and had to restart that the problems started. Anyway...

 

Troubleshooting done so far:

 

Temperatures - no issues. Stresstested both CPU and GPU, both peak at around 70 degrees celsius, but stay below 60 while playing the game. Though  I even bought a motherboard mic and set the BIOS to make it beep if the temperature gets too high, but nothing. 

 

Hardware health - PC is about a year and a bit old, and I actually have tested all the parts, even ran memtest86 on the ram. I have had no issues with it so far.

 

Software - Drivers are up to date, reinstalled these as well as the game itself. Also put the game on the boot SSD, which made no difference.

 

Event log - Blank, no entries between the time i start up the game and the time It boots itself back up.

 

Other than that, the way the shutdown behaves is almost as if you went behind the power supply and switched it off, no error messages or strange behaviours before the shutdown, just a sudden and immediate loss of power. Almost, because the PC does boot back up automatically a few seconds later.

 

Specs: 4790K, R9 290, 16GB of RAM, a Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 mobo, 256GB Crucial MX 100 and a 1TB WD caviar blue that the game is installed on.

Also, game is downloaded from Steam.

 

Any other troubleshooting ideas?

[MilfShake]

If it happens for only that game at that specific scene then it is software problem

[danomicar]

Whoa, this is crazy! Is there any technical support you can get from whoever publishes hitman?

[Litargirio]

Just now, MilfShake said:

If it happens for only that game at that specific scene then it is software problem

Yet what kind of software problem shuts off a PC? Usually they just cause crashes, BSOD in the worst case. Also, Google says I'm the only person that this is happening to.

[Litargirio]

1 minute ago, mcfly said:

Whoa, this is crazy! Is there any technical support you can get from whoever publishes hitman?

I don't think I'd be able to get any technical support since the game doesn't throw any errors. It's my PC that crashes, not the game.

[Energycore]

13 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

Here is a very strange issue that I have been having for well over two months. Basically, my PC outright turns itself off when I try to play (the beginning of) Part 3: Countdown of Hitman: Absolution. I can however play any other part of the same game without issues, and I also play all the other games that exist with no issues whatsoever, yet when I start Part 3: Countdown of this game, after walking around the roof for a bit, the PC shuts off less than a minute into the game.

 

Though I was almost able to beat this part of the game once without issues, it was only after I died and had to restart that the problems started. Anyway...

 

Troubleshooting done so far:

 

Temperatures - no issues. Stresstested both CPU and GPU, both peak at around 70 degrees celsius, but stay below 60 while playing the game. Though  I even bought a motherboard mic and set the BIOS to make it beep if the temperature gets too high, but nothing. 

 

Hardware health - PC is about a year and a bit old, and I actually have tested all the parts, even ran memtest86 on the ram. I have had no issues with it so far.

 

Software - Drivers are up to date, reinstalled these as well as the game itself. Also put the game on the boot SSD, which made no difference.

 

Event log - Blank, no entries between the time i start up the game and the time It boots itself back up.

 

Other than that, the way the shutdown behaves is almost as if you went behind the power supply and switched it off, no error messages or strange behaviours before the shutdown, just a sudden and immediate loss of power. Almost, because the PC does boot back up automatically a few seconds later.

 

Specs: 4790K, R9 290, 16GB of RAM, a Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 mobo, 256GB Crucial MX 100 and a 1TB WD caviar blue that the game is installed on.

Also, game is downloaded from Steam.

 

Any other troubleshooting ideas?

Couple things you can try:

 

An earlier version of the driver.

Reverting the GPU / CPU to stock settings if you're OCing them.

Looking for the same issue with just one stick of RAM.

If you disabled your pagefile, re-enable it.

 

Those are all I can think of. It's definitely fucking weird that it shuts down like that instead of hanging. Check for a prank

 

[Energycore]

Oh, also, scan your computer for malware while you're at it.

[Energycore]

Try and run the scene with crossfire disabled (or plain old a single 290 plugged in). Your profile says you've got 2, yes?

[Litargirio]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

Try and run the scene with crossfire disabled (or plain old a single 290 plugged in). Your profile says you've got 2, yes?

I am currently running 1.

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Litargirio said:

I am currently running 1.

Gotcha. You have my best wishes in troubleshooting.

 

You may have already done this but google to see if other people are getting shutdown during the same scene?

[Wed15septoid2]

While ingame monitor your temps with afterburner and see if its a temp issue with it conviently just hitting the temp limit as soon as you reach that part.

[Litargirio]

22 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Looking for the same issue with just one stick of RAM.

It worked! I think...

 

...

 

But... how? How is this possible?

 

It can't be... this is nonesense...

[Kryptyx]

It's probably an overflow issue. Is your ram running at the correct voltage? Is XMP enabled?

[Litargirio]

17 minutes ago, Kryptyx said:

It's probably an overflow issue. Is your ram running at the correct voltage? Is XMP enabled?

Ohmygawsh it was running 0.1 volts too low! I always thought that voltages would get adjusted automatically.

 

This is probably why I had to RMA my previous kit because one of the sticks stopped working...

[Kryptyx]

1 minute ago, Litargirio said:

Ohmygawsh it was running 0.1 volts too low! I always thought that voltages would get adjusted automatically.

 

This is probably why I had to RMA my previous kit because one of the sticks stopped working...

Well 0.1v shouldn't make a big difference but it is possible. I would expect a BSOD instead of a complete shutdown though. Still, see if the correct voltage helps while running all sticks.

[Litargirio]

1 minute ago, Kryptyx said:

Well 0.1v shouldn't make a big difference [...]

And it doesn't. I have not had any issues with it at all in over a year, except this particular thing.

[Energycore]

6 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

And it doesn't. I have not had any issues with it at all in over a year, except this particular thing.

Well, normally hard shutdowns by the motherboard come because of short circuit protection. But perhaps your RAM being fed less voltage also triggered some kind of electrical protection thingy that hard shutdown the computer.

Sometimes computers behave like they're alive

[Litargirio]

13 minutes ago, Kryptyx said:

Still, see if the correct voltage helps while running all sticks.

It doesn't... i cry...

[Litargirio]

@Kryptyx

 

Fixed it now though. Went ahead and set the frequency manually (even though the XMP profile was correctly applying 1886 mhz on auto), and saw a setting called "memory enhancement" with three options: auto, enhanced performance and enhanced stability. So I chose the latter, and things work now.

 

Now I just have to find out what exactly that setting does...