ASUS Z77 platform random shutdowns.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Specs:

 

ASUS PBZ77-V-LK

Intel i5-3570k

8GB Kingston DDR3 (currently; original config was mix and match 2x4 Kingston DDR3 and 2x4 GB Patriot G2 Series Dual Channel DDR3)

Samsung 850 EVO 500GB

1.5TB Seagate HDD

Thermaltake TR2 500W (swapped from OCZ StealthXStream 2 600w for troubleshooting)

 

I have a system with a Z77 system with seemingly the strangest problems I've ever encountered. This machine was running stable since it was built in around 2013 and the only thing that was changed was that the GPU was recently upgraded to a Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 from a MSI GTX 550Ti. It was moved to my siblings apartment last month after the upgrade where it ran perfectly fine for about 2-3 weeks. It was gamed on and everything, nothing seemed wrong. But suddenly the system was experiencing lockups and random hard shutdowns. So I've done the usual, clear CMOS and it was still locking up and turning off randomly. It couldn't even get through a memory test without hard shutting itself down midway.

 

Thinking it was a PSU issue because of the hard shutdowns (I figured something was possibly tripping the protections) I decided to swap the original OCZ StealthXStream 2 600w with a Thermaltake TR2 500W I had laying around. I know these aren't the best PSUs but they have been getting the job done for me for years. The system was still randomly shutting down. Finally I disabled the ASUS Anti-Surge Protection in the BIOS since I've read that it had a tendency to trip prematurely and I thought there's no way any sort of small circuitry or software on this board is going to save it from a power surge so I might as well disable it (If the PSU is out of whack, nothing is saving the board). And that seemed to have sorted things out initially. The system ran perfectly fine for around 6 hours of mixed use between gaming and watching YouTube. Fast forward to this morning, I decided to turn it on again to continue testing it for stability and it immediately went back to freezing and hard shutting down. Sometimes when this thing locks up, it doesn't lock up completely. The mouse and keyboard will not respond to any input but sometimes you can still see stuff moving. Like when I had YouTube running, it would stutter and show that loading circle just before it stops taking any user input. Once it does stop responding, the YouTube loading animation is still going so it seems it is still running somewhat. Even the clock continues to tick as the minutes past. But again, I can't figure out why. 

 

I've removed all of the sticks of memory and inserted only a brand new 8GB Kingston stick from my system, it still froze in that weird manner or turned off randomly. I've removed the GPU and ran off the iGPU, still freezes (and sometimes the entire screen gets corrupted while it's at it). I've moved the single stick of RAM to different slots, still freezes. This is a very strange issue too because it could lock up within 5 minutes of watching YouTube, or I could be watching for 40 minutes until it eventually dies. Any ideas of what could possibly cause the machine to go downhill so quickly and exhibit this strange behaviour?

 

[Moonzy]

18 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Sometimes when this thing locks up, it doesn't lock up completely. The mouse and keyboard will not respond to any input but sometimes you can still see stuff moving. Like when I had YouTube running, it would stutter and show that loading circle just before it stops taking any user input. Once it does stop responding, the YouTube loading animation is still going so it seems it is still running somewhat. Even the clock continues to tick as the minutes past. But again, I can't figure out why. 

sounds like software crash to me

or unstable CPU? did you check cpu stability?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Just now, Moonzy said:

sounds like software crash to me

I thought so too, until he mentioned that it would hard shutdown. And I wasn't sure if software could do that, at least not that I was aware of. It would at least bluescreen or hard reset, but not shutdown like the cord was pulled ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

 

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

or unstable CPU? did you check cpu stability?

Not sure how can now I since it just seemingly dies randomly even during the Windows Memory Diagnostic. Any other way to do that besides Prime95?

[Moonzy]

44 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Not sure how can now I since it just seemingly dies randomly even during the Windows Memory Diagnostic. Any other way to do that besides Prime95?

there's intelburntest but idk

at this point it's either the cpu, ram or motherboard, since you said it happens on iGPU, and u swapped PSU

 

software seldom do hard shut down, afaik