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Question

Power Down Problem?

Mar 7, 2015 3:55AM PST

Hello, first time poster here. I spent about an hour looking around for some sort of protocol for exactly how I should be posting, but I could not find it, so I am just going to post and hope for the best here:

My PC has recently made the decision to start powering down while gaming. Man, that's pretty annoying. There hasn't really been anything that's been done to the computer recently that would provoke this kind of behavior, and it's been fine for some time now. What might cause this sort of issue? Is there a way I can force my computer not to cut my power under any circumstances?

Perhaps relatedly, perhaps unrelatedly, when I attempt to wake the PC up from sleep mode, it doesn't seem to want to stay woken up. Typically it will start to wake up but lose power. I will then have to press the power button, and it will load (with everything as it was as though I had just woken it up) just fine.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Make, age, OS please.
Mar 7, 2015 4:00AM PST

Dafydd.

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Reply
Mar 7, 2015 4:24AM PST

When I looked up how to figure out the make of my pc, using msinfo32, it just said "system manufacturer" under the system manufacturer line. I'm on Windows 7 and I'm not entirely clear on how old the system is, I would estimate about 6 years old though.

I'm not sure what Dafydd means.

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Dafydd is my name (Welsh).
Mar 7, 2015 4:34AM PST

Sounds like a heat issue to me. How long since you used the canned air and replaced thermal paste?
A test, take the side panel off and point a fan at it. If it improves, most likely a heat issue.
Dafydd.

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I understand now, thanks!
Mar 7, 2015 4:54AM PST

I'm pretty regular with canned air, and two weeks ago when this first started being an issue I did it then.

I'm not sure what thermal paste even is though.

I will say that i opened up the side panel and pointed a fan at it, and still had the issue. Have had the issue in the past even when the room I was in was 50-60 degrees and the pc had just started up after being shut down for 8 hours.

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Thermal paste.
Mar 7, 2015 5:02AM PST

This is a compound that goes in between where the heatsinks are. At 6 years it could be cracked and dry. Your psu is now suspect also. Can you provide specs for your psu?
Dafydd.

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PSU specs
Mar 7, 2015 7:35PM PST

This is the sticker that is on the side of the PSU:

http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/17-103-937-03.jpg

The PSU was replaced within the past year, and while I suppose it's possible that the one I have isn't meeting my energy needs, it's hard to imagine that it's actually going bad... right?

I'm gonna see about going out to get some thermal paste today or tomorrow, I'll report back if that improves the situation.

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Answer
Re: power down when gaming
Mar 7, 2015 5:07AM PST

That's most likely an underpowered CPU, or some temperature effect (did you check the CPU and GPU fans?).

And anything noteworthy in event log? If it's something like "recovering from unsuspected shutdown" only, that shows that Windows didn't see a fatal failure causing it to shutdown (if it had, it would be in the logs) which certainly points to some hardware issue doing it out of the blue, so to say.

Kees

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And ...
Mar 7, 2015 5:13AM PST

The good test to see if it's hardware or software is to go back to factory conditions (reinstall the original Windows 7 and drivers) then start gaming and see what happens.

Hard disks a cheap, nowadays, so it makes sense to do this on a new hard disk, keeping the original with your current system safely stored away (with a copy on another disk, for just in case).

Kees

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No logs
Mar 7, 2015 7:38PM PST

Yeah, all I get is "recovered from an unexpected shutdown" and that makes me think that I need to replace something. That and I'm running off a SSD that basically only has Windows, essential programs, and 2 games -- everything else is on an external drive.