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Problem description: My PC has started randomly restarting, mostly when my son tries to play Valorant, but also more recently when I play Ixion. Some days we can play without any restarts, some days it can’t even load the game without restarting. It’s a bit strange, since earlier in the year I was playing games like Elden Ring fine without any issues. My PC isn’t amazing but it should be able to play these games without a problem. There seems to be two moments that consistently cause restarts: 1. When my son tries to play a Valorant competitive match (practice games don’t seem to cause restarts) 2. When I load Ixion it most commonly restarts just before it gets to the splash screen of the game (where you select New Game, Load Game etc). If I can get to that screen it’s usually fine after that. Attempted fixes: First I thought it was the CPU, since I had an i5, so I upgraded to an i7. But that didn’t help. Then I thought it was the GPU. Launching Valorant through GeForce Experience with lowered settings seems to reduce the restarts. But I’ve been doing a bunch of stress testing like with Furmark tools and it seems to be performing ok and none of the testing made it restart. I’ve updated a whole bunch of drivers, but that hasn’t made a difference. Now I think it might be the power supply? One thing that seems to help is turning off the power supply completely for a few minutes, using the switch on the back. Not sure why that would work! Recent changes: My old hard drive died early last year, but I successfully swapped it out. I was in the middle of playing through Chaos Gate Daemonhunters and I never had any issues with restarts before or after, until recently. The restart problem definitely only started once we installed Valorant. We’ve tried reinstalling and to different drives but no difference. Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit System specs: ASRock H110M-ITX/ac Motherboard Intel i7-7700 CPU Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC 6G Cooler Master Hyper 103 16 GB RAM Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 EVGA 500B Bronze PSU Thermaltake Core V1 Mini Tower Location: New Zealand I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes! Many such cases.
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Jan 8, 2023 10:57
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| # ? May 2, 2024 17:08 |
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I guess to start with I just need someone to point me in the right direction: - Would turning off the PSU as the back actually be doing anything? What's the best way to test the PSU? It's about 6 years old at this point. - If it's not the PSU what else might it be? The GPU is passing the benchmark testing I'm doing but could it still be failing?
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Jan 8, 2023 22:07
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Some steps to take: 1. Make sure W10 is fully updated and then run DDU https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4224 and then install the latest GPU drivers. 2. If that doesn't help then I'd use onboard video temporarily and see if the restarts continue. That would help to isolate the issue more. Red Rox posted:Now I think it might be the power supply? One thing that seems to help is turning off the power supply completely for a few minutes, using the switch on the back. Not sure why that would work! Red Rox posted:- Would turning off the PSU as the back actually be doing anything? What's the best way to test the PSU? It's about 6 years old at this point. Yes, it's possible the PSU is failing and it looks like it has only a three year warranty (the best quality PSUs come with longer warranties). There's no great way to test a PSU except to buy a new one and see if it corrects an issue. They sell PSU testers but they're mainly used to confirm continuity and that all the wires/pins are working properly. They won't tell you if a PSU is degraded and beginning to fail.
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Jan 9, 2023 00:35
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Thanks Zogo, but that didn't seem to help. I played an entire evening of Ixion without it restarting, so things were looking good, but now my son tried to play Valorant and it restarted about halfway through his match. I've turned the PSU off at the back, and we'll see if that helps again. I might try a new PSU - they aren't too expensive. A lot cheaper than a new GPU anyway! Anyone else have any ideas?
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Jan 9, 2023 23:51
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Red Rox posted:Thanks Zogo, but that didn't seem to help. I played an entire evening of Ixion without it restarting, so things were looking good, but now my son tried to play Valorant and it restarted about halfway through his match. I've turned the PSU off at the back, and we'll see if that helps again. I might try a new PSU - they aren't too expensive. A lot cheaper than a new GPU anyway! You could run https://www.hdsentinel.com/download.php to check HD/SSD health. You could also run https://www.memtest.org/ overnight at some point to check RAM health. If both of those are okay then trying another GPU or PSU would be the next step.
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Jan 10, 2023 00:16
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I had a similar issue a few years ago - turned out to be a faulty power supply causing shutdowns under load. I'd swap in a healthy PSU if you have one - or buy one from Best Buy or wherever and rest, and return it if it's not the problem.
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Jan 10, 2023 17:43
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Yeah good idea, I'll try that tomorrow. I ran the checks on my SSDs and RAM and they all look perfect.
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Jan 10, 2023 20:11
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Red Rox posted:Yeah good idea, I'll try that tomorrow. Just remember to use the PSU's power cables and not the ones already hooked up 
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Jan 11, 2023 03:52
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| # ? May 2, 2024 17:08 |
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So quick update - swapped out my old EVGA 500 Bronze for a 600 Gold and so far so good. My son was able to play Valorant without restarting (after being banned for a week for AFK lol) Hope that was the cause of the problem! I was thinking it might be the cooler fan cause that was making a bit too much noise before, but since I switched the power supply it has been quiet. Not sure why that would be but that’s a good sign I guess! Thanks goons for your help.
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Feb 2, 2023 07:52
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