Pc restarting without warning

[WarriorsMustang17]

For a few month this has been going on. At first it did very rarely, then it got to once a week, then once a day, and now sometimes when I first turn it on. I can be doing something, like watching a video, then the video freezes for a second, black screen, then it reboots. Then when logging on it takes a bit longer than usual. I'm assuming this some kind of hardware issue. My specs are i5 6500, Asus 970, 16gb ddr3, and os on a samsung 850 evo. What could be causing this or where can I look to see what's making it do this?

[Windows7ge]

Off the top of my head, things like an unstable overclock can cause this. Your description of the frequency suggests hardware degradation. It's not out of the question that it could be your PSU but you might also like to try removing a stick of RAM at a time and see if the system behaves.

[WarriorsMustang17]

11 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Off the top of my head, things like an unstable overclock can cause this. Your description of the frequency suggests hardware degradation. It's not out of the question that it could be your PSU but you might also like to try removing a stick of RAM at a time and see if the system behaves.

It's definitely not an overclock issue because my cpu doesn't have that capability. If it is hardware degradation what part could it be? I ran a memory test in windows 10 and it came up clean, and I can still play games like I could 4 years ago.

 

Then with my psu, would that be overheating? Or is it failing? Its a bronze evga 500w from 2016.  

[Windows7ge]

2 minutes ago, WarriorsMustang17 said:

It's definitely not an overclock issue because my cpu doesn't have that capability. If it is hardware degradation what part could it be? I ran a memory test in windows 10 and it came up clean, and I can still play games like I could 4 years ago.

 

Then with my psu, would that be overheating? Or is it failing? Its a bronze evga 500w from 2016.

If the system will finish the test run Memtestx86 to check your RAM for errors. I don't know what in Windows tools there are for RAM.

 

4 years old. Has potential to be the culprit but it's not that old and EVGA makes good units. Do you have a spare PSU you could temporarily rig in for testing?

[Gripen.aa]

Is it fine when gaming/ under big loads and is your problem just limited to 1 or 2 times a day? Have you tried using programs to monitor other temps like cpu and gpu temps to check if a fan has failed or something. also running [sfc /scan now] (without square brackets) in a administrator command prompt to check for driver corruption. A good idea to check aswell is when booting check all fans including gpu and psu fan are spinning. Gpuz is usefull to give info such as gpu voltages and cpu and gpu temps. Just a few things to try aswell as checking for driver updates etc

[WarriorsMustang17]

21 minutes ago, shepworth said:

Is it fine when gaming/ under big loads and is your problem just limited to 1 or 2 times a day? Have you tried using programs to monitor other temps like cpu and gpu temps to check if a fan has failed or something. also running [sfc /scan now] (without square brackets) in a administrator command prompt to check for driver corruption. A good idea to check aswell is when booting check all fans including gpu and psu fan are spinning. Gpuz is usefull to give info such as gpu voltages and cpu and gpu temps. Just a few things to try aswell as checking for driver updates etc

Yes gaming is still amazing. I could play HLA at a smooth 80 fps, minecraft with seus shaders, gta 5 etc, and it never restarts during those times. For temps I use nzxt cam because thats the case I have. In cpu z what should I look for with voltages to see if somethings wrong? 

[WarriorsMustang17]

26 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

If the system will finish the test run Memtestx86 to check your RAM for errors. I don't know what in Windows tools there are for RAM.

 

4 years old. Has potential to be the culprit but it's not that old and EVGA makes good units. Do you have a spare PSU you could temporarily rig in for testing?

Unfortunately not. This was my first pc build so I have very little spare parts. One thing to mention is about a year after I finished building, my old ram started to fail. I had corsair ram of the same spec and it cause similar issues, except those were full bluescreens and errors came up in mem tests. I wouldn't think it would be the same thing because I replaced them with gskill.  

[Gripen.aa]

11 minutes ago, WarriorsMustang17 said:

Yes gaming is still amazing. I could play HLA at a smooth 80 fps, minecraft with seus shaders, gta 5 etc, and it never restarts during those times. For temps I use nzxt cam because thats the case I have. In cpu z what should I look for with voltages to see if somethings wrong? 

i mean its fine in gaming under intense loads. Does it crash more under intense loads. If it is crashing more randomly and not really being effected on what your doing probably more of a driver/ software thing as if crashes aren't happening more under intense loads its unlikely to be cpu/gpu/psu related. Voltages wise if its pretty stable voltages around what you expect (around 1.3v for your cpu) then thats fine. Sounds like it is a software/storage thing if your not being effected in games driver check is main thing could be buggy old windows etc - did it start scince a perticular update? Or could be a hard drive failing especially if its getting more frequent.

[WarriorsMustang17]

18 minutes ago, shepworth said:

i mean its fine in gaming under intense loads. Does it crash more under intense loads. If it is crashing more randomly and not really being effected on what your doing probably more of a driver/ software thing as if crashes aren't happening more under intense loads its unlikely to be cpu/gpu/psu related. Voltages wise if its pretty stable voltages around what you expect (around 1.3v for your cpu) then thats fine. Sounds like it is a software/storage thing if your not being effected in games driver check is main thing could be buggy old windows etc - did it start scince a perticular update? Or could be a hard drive failing especially if its getting more frequent.

Its random. Doesn't matter what I doing at the time. I couldn't pinpoint an exact update. I think it started around mid march, but it happened so infrequently that I never gave much thought about it and just thought something updated 

[Gripen.aa]

40 minutes ago, WarriorsMustang17 said:

Its random. Doesn't matter what I doing at the time. I couldn't pinpoint an exact update. I think it started around mid march, but it happened so infrequently that I never gave much thought about it and just thought something updated 

I mean if its been going since mid march if it is hardware related your extremely lucky the componant hasn't died. I would assume its hard drive or driver related. Could be either. religously check every single driver for update, run the command to check for driver error/ conflicts in command again after to check for driver errors/clashes and for storage drive maybe use crysteldiskinfo/ samsungs own ssd software to check for errors/drive health. Prob isn't windows if many updates have come out since and it hasn't fixed itself and its getting worse and you didn't notice it starting after an update.

[Windows7ge]

3 hours ago, WarriorsMustang17 said:

Its random. Doesn't matter what I doing at the time. I couldn't pinpoint an exact update. I think it started around mid march, but it happened so infrequently that I never gave much thought about it and just thought something updated 

Could you boot something like Ubuntu and see how long it goes for without crashing? If it stays stable it's likely a software related issue. If not it's hardware.

[WarriorsMustang17]

4 hours ago, shepworth said:

I mean if its been going since mid march if it is hardware related your extremely lucky the componant hasn't died. I would assume its hard drive or driver related. Could be either. religously check every single driver for update, run the command to check for driver error/ conflicts in command again after to check for driver errors/clashes and for storage drive maybe use crysteldiskinfo/ samsungs own ssd software to check for errors/drive health. Prob isn't windows if many updates have come out since and it hasn't fixed itself and its getting worse and you didn't notice it starting after an update.

I ran the sfc scanner and it found and repaired files. Whether they were the files that are causing issues idk. I checked my drives health and everything is good. I'll let you know in a a few days if it worked or now. Thanks for helping.