Random Reboots While playing games.

Goatboye · November 7, 2018

Hi all, I have been having this issue for about a year now and slowly been replacing components in the mean time. However, the main thing I figured what was the problem ended up not being the issue at all and the problem still is happening.

So, the issue I'm currently facing is that while I am gaming my PC will randomly reboot. Doesn't matter what game it is, whether it be WoW, Overwatch, or even a much less intensive game, OSRS. It is really intermittent meaning, I could play for a whole day with no issues or I can't even get passed the Main Screen before a reboot. There is no BSOD and the only issues that show in the event viewer is just the Kernel power failure stating that the PC rebooted.

So my current specs are as follows:
Windows 7 (upgraded to Windows 10 after reformatting)
Mobo: Asus X99-A
CPU: Intel i7-5820k (not overclocked)
GPU: GeForce NVIDIA 980ti (substituted a GTX 760 while I waited for my RMA to come back for the new 980ti. More on that later)
RAM: 4x 8GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX.
PSU: Cooler Master 850W (later replaced with Corsaire 850W, same with GPU, more on that later.)
HDD: Seagate 3TB
SSD: 2 x Samsung 850 EVO 250GB

Here's what I've done so far and my thinking a long the way:

So after my very first reboot about a year ago I kinda shrugged it off and thought it was just an power shortage in the area. It was fine for a few weeks later but then the reboots began to be more and more common. First thing I decided to do was move the PC to a separate wall outlet to rule out if it was the wall outlet that was causing the issue. Still rebooting. Okay, so the next thing I did was change out my PSU, as well as the cables alongside with it. No effect, still rebooting. I thought "Hey if I start to do a GPU benchmark maybe it'll crash and I can pin point it to the GPU" well, fully ran through the GPU benchmark with no faults what-so-ever. Hmm.... moved onto Memtest full 12 hours later, passed with no issues. Did a CPU burn after 8 hours of testing, no issues arrive. Still rebooting in game though. At this point I'm getting a bit annoyed that I couldn't fix it so I brought it to my local PC repair shop where I would get it reformatted and they would test it. They never got a reboot while there but as soon as I got it home and hooked it up, I was getting a reboot. I had also moved places since then so I still don't believe it is an outlet issue. So the next thing I did was replace my 980ti. I got it RMA'd so after a week or so. I wanted to play some games so I put in a GTX 760 and... no reboots. Never had any issues with the 760 in (besides the obvious downgrade in FPS and such). Huzzah! My issues were fixed, the GPU was bad! Or was it? Turns out it wasn't the GPU. Got the new 980ti in and same issue as before reboots randomly in game and no where else. So to recap, I've replaced PSU, and the GPU. Next step was to replace the Mobo. So I get a new X99-A, I get fresh bios installed, fully updated and... nope still reboots. I'm at my bud's place while doing this step of troubleshooting so we figured it might be the RAM. So we take out my RAM and put in his RAM into the board. No reboots... well that's what we thought. After a few moments of playing it crashes.

And that leads us to now, where I'm really desperate to fix this and I've thrown a lot of money into it. I want it to work because it's such a nice build and I miss playing on it and I don't wanna play on my considerably worse laptop.

Any help will be great and thank you!

Goatboye · November 21, 2018

Update to this issue:

So I replaced the MOBO (again) and the CPU.

I swapped to a the Z730 AORUS Gaming 5 and an 8700k CPU. Went to boot up, everything was going fine, went to go play FFXIV and.... crash.

I'm really confused here, because I pretty much have a brand new build and the issue is still persisting.