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Question

Win. 10 Home-Built PC Shuts Down While Gaming

Jul 29, 2016 5:17PM PDT

Recently (this month) my home-built PC has been shutting off while gaming. I am having difficulty determining why.

The PC is kept extremely clean. I blow everything out at least once a month, and the temps are all normal. (GPU stays between 50-60 degrees C)

The PC performs great while browsing/streaming/etc., but when I start playing a game (i.e War Thunder) it will perform fantastically until it suddenly displays a black screen. Usually, the audio will distort, but then continue playing. I can sometimes hear a couple Windows notification sounds, but I have no idea what they are.

The event log displays an Event 41 with PID 4 in the execution "tab" (if that's what it is called). I looked up the process with PID 4 and it is an executable called NT Kernel & System, by none other than Microsoft, that was signed on the first of this month and accessed by my PC on the thirteenth.

So my question is this: Did Microsoft screw up my PC with a forced update, or is it a power problem?

Thanks for reading my wall of text lol

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I'm going with no.
Jul 29, 2016 5:30PM PDT

I've seen gaming rigs do that on Windows 3 to 10 so my answer is no.

I don't see PC details so I can't guess if this is another AMD or PSU issue. If you suspect power, why?

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PC Details
Jul 30, 2016 8:21PM PDT

My PC:
Intel Core i5 4690K @ 3.5 GHz
16 (4x4) Crucial "Sport" RAM
GTX 970 from MSI
1TB Seagate hard drive
EVGA 700B PSU

I apologize for not including this in the original post.
I suspect power for a number of reasons, most notably that the power in my area tends to be a little sub-par. We also have a lot of line work going on that might be affecting things.

However, I do find it interesting that around the time this started, Microsoft apparently released a new version of NT Kernel & System, and that this is the process that keeps showing up in the logs.

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Addendum to "PC Details"
Jul 30, 2016 8:25PM PDT

My motherboard is a Gigabyte Z97X-SLI

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Not seeing any effect from W10 updates.
Jul 30, 2016 8:41PM PDT

But we only have a few dozen PCs in the office on W10.

If power is that unstable, you should look into some UPS.

Is that 4 sticks of memory? Try it with just one pair. And is the BIOS current?

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BIOS Update Fixed Problem
Jul 30, 2016 10:22PM PDT

I updated the BIOS and everything is working 100% beautifully. Stupid thing is I didn't think of it sooner. Hah! Thank you all for your help!

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Try this
Jul 30, 2016 11:27PM PDT

Remove the side panel....test.