PC shuts down every time I connect my external HDD and randomly during Dota 2 after a while

SaturnusK1 · December 31, 2021

Hello everyone,

I have a PC with this config:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with stock cooler
Motherboard: Asus Prime B450-Plus
Ram: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2*8) DDR4 3000
Graphics Card: Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super Gaming X3 OC 8GB
PSU: Cooler Master 750W Gold plus
Lexar 500GB nvme + 2TB Samsun Qvo 870 Sata SSD + 2TB Seagate HDD
Monitor: ViewSonic XG 27" 1440p 144hz

I built this PC about 1.5 years ago and I've been using it for mobile game development with Unity. So apart from some times that I repack art asset atlases with compression that is using CPU for like 5 to 30 minutes it is not doing that much.

I used to play games like Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty Moden Warfare at 1440p but haven't done that in a while.

Anyway, about six months ago it started showing some weird behaviors. When I shut down my computer, I couldn't power it up by the power button. Until I used PSU button at the back to cut off the power for like 5 minutes and then the power button would work. It was like this for a while on and off and I couldn't find out what's the reason. One time I decided to re-assemble the PC but it didn't fix it. Then it got fixed for some reason I don't know. This was the first thing.

Then a month ago I started to play Dota 2 again. It was fine, no problem here, until one day I connected my 2TB western digital External HDD to the front panel USB and the PC shut down immediately without any error or anything. I turned on the PC and it was working fine, the HDD also worked fine. After a week connected the HDD again, but this time I used the USB port in the back and it happened again, the PC immediately shut down with no error. Then after another couple of weeks it started to shut down while playing game. Just like before it shut down with no error or any sign. It was like the power went out but the LED strip on the motherboard was working. I noticed if I immediately after the shutdown (like withing a second of it) hit the power button it would stop working just like before.

I googled a bit and got the suggestion that maybe it's related to the PSU so I looked at it and noticed that the last time I re-assembled my PC I put it upside down inside the PSU enclosure so the fan was on the top and it probably didn't have enough air intake to cool down the PSU while gaming. I put it in correctly and it fixed the problem for a day but it started again and this time it got worth. Before it would shut down after 4 or 5 hours but now after an hour of gameplay.

For the USB issue I tried to narrow it down. With the External HDD if I connect it to any of the USBs on the PC it would shut down in windows or BIOS. If I use the USB hubs on my monitors or my keyboard it does shut down. I used my mouse, keyboard and flash drive and none of them caused the PC to shut down. I used only the cable without attaching the HDD and it didn't cause any shut down.

For the shut down during game I used HWiNFO to monitor the PC and all the temperature I could see were normal. CPU was around 80 and GPU was 70 all the time. I used a memtest to see if the RAMs were OK and a three hour test didn't show any error there. I also used a synthetic benchmark (a combination of Cinebench r23 multi core and FurMark for 30 minutes) and the PC was fine and stable. The GPU and CPU were thermal throttled to around 1815MHz and 3.8GHz respectively during that time but no power limit or anything and no shut down.

Now I have couple of ideas. I think it's either Motherboard or PSU but I don't have access to any extra of any of these to test it out. I think maybe the PSU got a defect during the time I was using it upside down and now it can't handle sudden surge of power that may happen during game but since the synthetic benchmark is steady it doesn't have any issue handling that. And for the USB it maybe something is wrong (a capacitor maybe?) with the HDD that acts like a short circuit (subscribe to the channel, it's a good :)) ) and causes the PSU to shut down the PC. Maybe these are not related at all, frankly I have no idea at right now.

Can anyone help me with these? Any ideas?

Edited December 31, 2021 by SaturnusK1