Could the PSU be causing the issue? My PC reboots after a few minutes of gaming.

[aswer1337]

Hello, I'm having a very annoying issue with my PC, and I'm not sure what caused it or what's broken. I will keep my story short. Thanks for checking this post:

 

Two days ago, I tried turning off my PC by holding the power button while the monitor was off and several programs (like Chrome, Figma, etc.) were still open. It didn’t shut down right away, so I pressed and held the power button multiple times. Each time it turned off, it would turn back on by itself, so I kept holding the button to power it off again. This happened about five times before it finally stayed off. I went to bed and didn’t think much of it at the time.

 

The next morning, I turned the PC back on, and as soon as it reached the desktop, it restarted by itself. I unplugged it from the wall and left it for about 10 minutes. After that, it booted up normally. Later that day, I played a few CS matches. The first game went fine, but during the second game, the PC suddenly shut off and rebooted. I got back into the match, but after a couple of minutes, it happened again—no error, just a black screen and instant reboot.

 

Since then, I’ve tried a bunch of troubleshooting steps: swapped the RAM, removed and reinserted the BIOS battery to reset the BIOS, updated the BIOS, did a fresh Windows reinstall, updated all drivers, ran benchmarks (like Cinebench), and checked the temperatures. Everything looked normal, but the random restarts continued while playing CS.

 

Then I noticed something strange—when I changed my Windows power plan from High Performance to Balanced or Power Saver, the crashing stopped completely. Now I’m wondering: could this be because the CPU clock stays under 5GHz in those modes? Could my PSU be failing to provide enough power when the CPU is running at full performance? Is it possible that repeatedly forcing the PC off while it was trying to boot back on damaged something in the PSU?

 

Event Viewer error code: Event ID 41 Kernel

 

PSU: Sursa Segotep gp600g 500W 80 Plus Gold

MOBO: ASUS TUF GAMING Z790-PLUS D4

CPU: 13600K

GPU: 1050TI STRIX

RAM: 16GB 3600 CORSAIR

 

Are there any other things I should do or tests I can run to know for sure if it’s the PSU?

Thanks!

[The K-Man89]

How old is your build? If it's a new build it's possible you have a loose wire/connector for your case power/restart buttons. If it's an established build that just started doing this then it's possible power protection settings are being triggered. Do you have another PSU you can try swapping in to check?

[aswer1337]

29 minutes ago, The K-Man89 said:

How old is your build? If it's a new build it's possible you have a loose wire/connector for your case power/restart buttons. If it's an established build that just started doing this then it's possible power protection settings are being triggered. Do you have another PSU you can try swapping in to check?

I bought the GPU and PSU in 2017, and the motherboard, RAM, and CPU in 2023, so it's not that new. Unfortunately, I don't have another one to swap.

 

For Windows, I'm using a Lexar NQ790 1TB PCI Express 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 SSD. Since I did a fresh Windows install, I'm pretty sure the system isn't corrupted

[191x7]

5 hours ago, aswer1337 said:

Hello, I'm having a very annoying issue with my PC, and I'm not sure what caused it or what's broken. I will keep my story short. Thanks for checking this post:

 

Two days ago, I tried turning off my PC by holding the power button while the monitor was off and several programs (like Chrome, Figma, etc.) were still open. It didn’t shut down right away, so I pressed and held the power button multiple times. Each time it turned off, it would turn back on by itself, so I kept holding the button to power it off again. This happened about five times before it finally stayed off. I went to bed and didn’t think much of it at the time.

 

The next morning, I turned the PC back on, and as soon as it reached the desktop, it restarted by itself. I unplugged it from the wall and left it for about 10 minutes. After that, it booted up normally. Later that day, I played a few CS matches. The first game went fine, but during the second game, the PC suddenly shut off and rebooted. I got back into the match, but after a couple of minutes, it happened again—no error, just a black screen and instant reboot.

 

Since then, I’ve tried a bunch of troubleshooting steps: swapped the RAM, removed and reinserted the BIOS battery to reset the BIOS, updated the BIOS, did a fresh Windows reinstall, updated all drivers, ran benchmarks (like Cinebench), and checked the temperatures. Everything looked normal, but the random restarts continued while playing CS.

 

Then I noticed something strange—when I changed my Windows power plan from High Performance to Balanced or Power Saver, the crashing stopped completely. Now I’m wondering: could this be because the CPU clock stays under 5GHz in those modes? Could my PSU be failing to provide enough power when the CPU is running at full performance? Is it possible that repeatedly forcing the PC off while it was trying to boot back on damaged something in the PSU?

 

Event Viewer error code: Event ID 41 Kernel

 

PSU: Sursa Segotep gp600g 500W 80 Plus Gold

MOBO: ASUS TUF GAMING Z790-PLUS D4

CPU: 13600K

GPU: 1050TI STRIX

RAM: 16GB 3600 CORSAIR

 

Are there any other things I should do or tests I can run to know for sure if it’s the PSU?

Thanks!

Intel 13th generation degradation (due to the well known bug/issue with 13th/14th gen), since you mention you've updated the bios only after the issues started.

[The K-Man89]

11 hours ago, aswer1337 said:

I bought the GPU and PSU in 2017, and the motherboard, RAM, and CPU in 2023, so it's not that new. Unfortunately, I don't have another one to swap.

 

For Windows, I'm using a Lexar NQ790 1TB PCI Express 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 SSD. Since I did a fresh Windows install, I'm pretty sure the system isn't corrupted

Doesn't sound like a corrupt system issue, you should be good there. Due to the age of your GPU and PSU it's possible 1 of the power pins in those connections is going bad triggering protection protocols. You can try a visual to see if the inside of those power connectors are dirty/dusty but if you are able to pick up a cheap PSU off marketplace or something might be worth trying. It's easy to overload the 1050 as well, if you got a buddy with a different GPU you can see if they can bring it over to try in your system to see if the problem persists.

[Mark Kaine]

Replace the CMOS battery. Otherwise idk how it's supposed to be possible to troubleshoot a PC with a likely faulty Intel CPU without replacing it outright.

 

But of course replacing the PSU first is another option if replacing CMOS battery doesn't fix it

[aswer1337]

Update: I bought another PSU and everything seems to be working fine for now. So if anyone encounters this type of issue, it might be the PSU. Thanks everyone for the help!