Computer Randomly Shuts Down During Gaming, not Sure if Heat, Power, or Other

[Hayesey]

Ok, first post, be gentle.

I bought Fallout 4 yesterday, and after about 30 min of play on Ultra, my computer seemed to shut down, however my tower's power light had stayed on. This had happened before. Never really bothered to fix it due to how infrequent it was. However, when I tried to play again in high settings, I thankfully got far enough to save, but soon after my entire computer shut down, no tower light. I am not sure what caused the difference, or the shut down in the first place. I've included pictures of where my PC is located on my desk, if that helps. Intake fans are on top, back and bottom. Front of PC faces the desk support.

So do I need to just move computer? Do I need to upgrade something?

OS: 64 bit

Specs: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Hayesey/saved/#view=YX4Pxr (I do hope I can post links.)

BIOS version: American Megatrends Inc. P1.60 5/6/2014

Software running during issue: Fallout 4.

 

[MLG Doge]

Do you have any idea of your temps while you play?

[Hayesey]

Do you have any idea of your temps while you play?

No. Is there something that I could use to find this out? Preinstalled or no?

[GangstaRas]

Idk how heavy Fallout 4 is but I'm thinking the first shutdown was probably your computer running out of RAM and just black screening on you, whether it was from the GPU or the system. Possibility but I myself kind of find it unlikely given your specs. Happens to me when I play GTA 5 with my browser open, my computer tends to chip out when I hit 7GB of the 8GB RAM. The second shutdown is the typical sign of a heat issue but I also find that to be even more unlikely, you have a good cooler on the CPU and the GTX 760 is going to throttle itself perfectly at 80 C, so unless your cooler is falling off your CPU somehow, not sure what to make of this

[Hayesey]

Idk how heavy Fallout 4 is but I'm thinking the first shutdown was probably your computer running out of RAM and just black screening on you, whether it was from the GPU or the system. Possibility but I myself kind of find it unlikely given your specs. Happens to me when I play GTA 5 with my browser open, my computer tends to chip out when I hit 7GB of the 8GB RAM. The second shutdown is the typical sign of a heat issue but I also find that to be even more unlikely, you have a good cooler on the CPU and the GTX 760 is going to throttle itself perfectly at 80 C, so unless your cooler is falling off your CPU somehow, not sure what to make of this

After the first case, where I black screened, I opened up my case to try to figure out what the issue was. I tried to take out my main cooling fan due to it being a bit dusty, and as I tried to remove it from the giant metal block (Is that called the heatsink? Always had that question too.), the block seemed to move a bit. I think that it's attached by thermal paste (Yeah, not the greatest with computers in case that hasn't become obvious yet.), would that movement affect the cooling shutdown which is the only way that it's happened after the block moved? After the block movement, I reduced the quality to high, and from there on out only got the heat shutdown. The RAM shutdown may be likely for the first time because that usually happens to me if I have a lot of streams going on multitwitch, but always equated it to heat because after the shutdown it seemed a lot hotter near my intake fans than it usually is.

 

So if this is all diagnosed correctly it's a case of reapplying thermal paste and getting more RAM/running on a lower setting?

[GangstaRas]

After the first case, where I black screened, I opened up my case to try to figure out what the issue was. I tried to take out my main cooling fan due to it being a bit dusty, and as I tried to remove it from the giant metal block (Is that called the heatsink? Always had that question too.), the block seemed to move a bit. I think that it's attached by thermal paste (Yeah, not the greatest with computers in case that hasn't become obvious yet.), would that movement affect the cooling shutdown which is the only way that it's happened after the block moved? After the block movement, I reduced the quality to high, and from there on out only got the heat shutdown. The RAM shutdown may be likely for the first time because that usually happens to me if I have a lot of streams going on multitwitch, but always equated it to heat because after the shutdown it seemed a lot hotter near my intake fans than it usually is.

 

So if this is all diagnosed correctly it's a case of reapplying thermal paste and getting more RAM/running on a lower setting?

Although we call it thermal paste as far as I know it does not have great adhesive properties, so that cooler would've fallen from the CPU and smashed into your GPU below if it was held up solely by thermal paste. The fact that you told me the heatsink shifted tells me that its probably not secured properly, causing overheating issues. To confirm this though, you would need a program like HWMonitor to monitor your CPU temperatures and then a CPU stressing program like Prime95 or so, just to be sure. If your run the stress test and find that your CPU rapidly hits up to 70 C or greater (like in seconds) then you can shutdown the stress test, and that would be enough for me to conclude that yes all you need to do is reapply thermal paste and secure the heatsink properly. It should not move at all if it's properly secured. For the RAM "shutdown", you're not in immediate danger there as its occurrence is infrequent, so get more RAM when its convenient to you

[Hayesey]

If your run the stress test and find that your CPU rapidly hits up to 70 C or greater (like in seconds) then you can shutdown the stress test

What type of test should I run?

[GangstaRas]

What type of test should I run?

 

Preferably the option that says maximum heat (the first option) in Prime95

[Hayesey]

Just ran test, got to 70 degrees in about 90 seconds. Is that just good cooling + bad thermal paste or something else?

Also note that the heatsink barely moved. Maybe 2 milimeters.

[GangstaRas]

70 C in 90 seconds. That's sounds good enough for me to say you don't have any severe cooler issues. The next step would be to report how hot the CPU gets while you're gaming. Also make sure you're monitoring the GPU temperatures as well

[Hayesey]

After 8 mins of playing Fallout 4 on High graphics, 1920x1080 resolution, heat shutdown at about 83 C.

[GangstaRas]

Alright time to open up your system, clean off the old thermal paste, reapply new one then reseat the heatsink and again make sure its properly secured, not even 2 millimetres of shifting should be seen, it should be as solid as a rock, unmovable when you're done. And don't apply too much thermal paste, you do more harm than good that way by insulating the heat, just use a rice grain size in the middle and the heatsink will spread it out when you securely attach it on to the motherboard 

[Hayesey]

Sorry for the long period of not replying, but I have been doing work and I have made great leaps.

 

It seems it was never my thermal paste. Instead it was my CPU fan, which had a frozen ball bearing. After reapplying thermal paste had not worked, I called in someone to look at it. He spun the CPU fan, showed my how it was not spinning as easily as my intake fans, and said that was a sign of a frozen ball bearing. He clarified and booted up the computer and told me the noise it made on start up was the frozen ball bearing trying to get going. So I claimed my warranty on my fan, and it is set to arrive on the 7th. But today I had gotten curious about how the fan was running while my computer was on, and why my computer was heating up so much that it did the tower-stays-on-shutdown, and when I looked back, I found out that the fan was not spinning at all. So that made me realize that when I would be able to game for about half an hour until I hit high temps and had to stop playing, I was running off of my intake fans purely. Not going to lie I was a bit proud of that.

 

So I did some searching on Google, and looked at some answers to why CPU fans aren't spinning, and didn't really get any helpful answers. But what I did see is that some fans don't run the whole time the computer is on. So my new question is, is there any way to try to manually turn my fan on to see if it will still run, and is there any other way besides a frozen ball bearing that it is not running?

[GangstaRas]

Sorry for the long period of not replying, but I have been doing work and I have made great leaps.

 

It seems it was never my thermal paste. Instead it was my CPU fan, which had a frozen ball bearing. After reapplying thermal paste had not worked, I called in someone to look at it. He spun the CPU fan, showed my how it was not spinning as easily as my intake fans, and said that was a sign of a frozen ball bearing. He clarified and booted up the computer and told me the noise it made on start up was the frozen ball bearing trying to get going. So I claimed my warranty on my fan, and it is set to arrive on the 7th. But today I had gotten curious about how the fan was running while my computer was on, and why my computer was heating up so much that it did the tower-stays-on-shutdown, and when I looked back, I found out that the fan was not spinning at all. So that made me realize that when I would be able to game for about half an hour until I hit high temps and had to stop playing, I was running off of my intake fans purely. Not going to lie I was a bit proud of that.

 

So I did some searching on Google, and looked at some answers to why CPU fans aren't spinning, and didn't really get any helpful answers. But what I did see is that some fans don't run the whole time the computer is on. So my new question is, is there any way to try to manually turn my fan on to see if it will still run, and is there any other way besides a frozen ball bearing that it is not running?

From what I can see, it looks like the Hyper 212 EVO uses replaceable brackets to hold the fans in place so if you were to use one of your case fans that's the same size as the CPU fan then you can be up and running properly no problem as you wait on your replacement fan.

With that said, the man that diagnosed your fan probably saw it before it full out died. So when you were running your PC today, the fan is getting power but its now stuck and can't move on it own anymore and the cause of that is the frozen ball bearing. That fan is as good as useless now. For experimental purposes you may could try to fix the fan by disassembling the motor but usually this does more harm than good and ends up not worth the effort.

[Hayesey]

Ok, so once again, no update for a while. I've finally fixed it all, and I'm going to centralize what I learned during this. 

 

If your computer randomly turns off while gaming or watching streams:

• Get CPUID HWMonitor
• Check your CPU temperatures while doing processes. If you hit 70+ C, you have a heating issue.

​You have a heating issue. Time to crack open your case.

• First, check your CPU fan, the large one attached to the metal block. Try spinning this fan. If your fan is resisting, not spinning for a tiny bit after pushing it, you have a frozen ball bearing. Claim your warranty.
• If that's not the case, then you need to take your fan off, and reapply thermal paste.
• That's all I've learned. If that hasn't helped, don't know what to tell you.