Ok, I've been facing the following problem in the last few months:
Without any particular reason (happens both in idle and under full load instances, so no pattern to it) the computer will instantly reboot, won't post and the fans from the gpu and cpu will start spinning at max.
Restarting it, powering it off and on again results in the same behaviour immediately (no post etc.).
At first I thought it was dust, so I opened it up and cleaned it all thoroughly. Then it would work.
After a few weeks it happened again, again thought it was dust. Then it started happening every few days without any dust build up.
I thought that the 'fix' probably has to do with removing the power cable (as I was doing when dusting it off), so I removed the cable, leave it a few minutes, power it up and it would work ok. Looking at the logs it just said kernel error.
Sometimes, when it would turn on and start booting windows 8 I would get a 'memory_management' error, it would restart itself and then boot normally.
I thought it might be the RAM, so resitted the RAM, but no change. I ran memory diagnostics, cpu stress tests, gpu stress tests all came back clear. I started suspecting the mobo or PSU. I moved the gpu to another pci slot, again same issues.
I had isolated the problem down to the psu falling apart when I read the following on the interwebz (it was recommended as the first step in solutions that would recommend going ahead and doing all sorts of other stuff): I removed the CMOS battery, left it a minute to clear and plugged it back in. Now the PC is working just fine, (it would fail multiple times a day recently) for 4 days straight (24h).
Is there an explanation behind this? Can it be down to the CMOS battery? The cpu is not overclocked (I had played around with it a bit a year ago but reloaded the default BIOS settings).
Any ideas on why that fix worked and whether there is anything else I need to check?
Without any particular reason (happens both in idle and under full load instances, so no pattern to it) the computer will instantly reboot, won't post and the fans from the gpu and cpu will start spinning at max.
Restarting it, powering it off and on again results in the same behaviour immediately (no post etc.).
At first I thought it was dust, so I opened it up and cleaned it all thoroughly. Then it would work.
After a few weeks it happened again, again thought it was dust. Then it started happening every few days without any dust build up.
I thought that the 'fix' probably has to do with removing the power cable (as I was doing when dusting it off), so I removed the cable, leave it a few minutes, power it up and it would work ok. Looking at the logs it just said kernel error.
Sometimes, when it would turn on and start booting windows 8 I would get a 'memory_management' error, it would restart itself and then boot normally.
I thought it might be the RAM, so resitted the RAM, but no change. I ran memory diagnostics, cpu stress tests, gpu stress tests all came back clear. I started suspecting the mobo or PSU. I moved the gpu to another pci slot, again same issues.
I had isolated the problem down to the psu falling apart when I read the following on the interwebz (it was recommended as the first step in solutions that would recommend going ahead and doing all sorts of other stuff): I removed the CMOS battery, left it a minute to clear and plugged it back in. Now the PC is working just fine, (it would fail multiple times a day recently) for 4 days straight (24h).
Is there an explanation behind this? Can it be down to the CMOS battery? The cpu is not overclocked (I had played around with it a bit a year ago but reloaded the default BIOS settings).
Any ideas on why that fix worked and whether there is anything else I need to check?
