Random power off issue

psykix

psykix

psykix

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17 Jan 2007
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576
Hi!

I upgraded my son's PC for him - I'm not new to PC building having been doing it for decades, but this one has me stumped!

Bought new case, motherboard, RAM and CPU.

We have :-

Ryzen 7 5800x
MSI X570 Tomahawk Motherboard
32GB of Corsair Vengeance C18 memory
Corsair 5000x RGB case.

We reused his PSU (Corsair 1000W I think) which was fairly new anyway, and his MSI 2080Ti GPU

CPU is cooled with a 240mm Corsair AIO and I put Noctua NT-H2 thermal paste on the CPU.

The PC powers off randomly and the power cable needs to be unplugged and plugged back in before it will power on again.

I have updated the BIOS to the latest to see if it fixed the issue, and the only change made within it is I have enabled the XMP profile for the memory.

I also updated the chipset drivers and all windows updates.

I have no idea how to troubleshoot this - there is nothing in the event viewer apart from the notification of an unexpected shut down.

He has HWInfo running and says that all temperatures show as fine.

Any ideas???
 
Oh, one thing that may or may not be relevant... I only plugged one PSU cable on the motherboard for the CPU - I believe the other is only needed if overclocking, but happy to be corrected.

He also said most of the time the power off occurs when he is playing WoW and dies in a dungeon, when releasing corpse it can power off. Not exclusively then, but has happened multiple times in that scenario.

Sounds bizarre!!
 
OK, so at the the top of the mobo you have an 8pin on the left and 4pin on the right. You have the 8pin in right? It wouldn't hurt pluggin the 4pin as well, that's what I do on my X570 Tomahawk.
 
psykix said:
Oh, one thing that may or may not be relevant... I only plugged one PSU cable on the motherboard for the CPU - I believe the other is only needed if overclocking, but happy to be corrected.

He also said most of the time the power off occurs when he is playing WoW and dies in a dungeon, when releasing corpse it can power off. Not exclusively then, but has happened multiple times in that scenario.

Sounds bizarre!!
Click to expand...
You shouldnt need the 2nd cpu power cable but its worth plugging one in just in case .

If its the same scene in the game thats causing the issue its looks like it could be software releated.
 
Yeah, the 8 pin is plugged in, the 4 pin is empty. I can try that - he doesn't live with me so I will have to go add the extra cable.
 
I'll try some of the above.. it's a clean install of Windows 10 also, as I never like to do such a major change and keep the current OS.

I'll report back! However.. after having a search around, there are a good few issues with X570 Tomahawk boards.. may look at changing it out if possible.
 
Apparently it has never done it whilst idle. The thing that baffles me is that I think that the power cable needs to be unplugged before you can power back on. Think that would indicate some sort of overload protection on the PSU?

No overclocks other than default XMP profile enabled.
 
Try disabling XMP next. AFAIK OCP only occurs when the PSU tries drawing more power than it's rated for.

Edit, my mistake that's OPP (Over Power Protection).
 
The only time I've seen similar behaviour was with a friends PC after we upgraded the graphics card. I can't remember the model now, but his PSU didn't have sufficient 6 PIN PCI-E power connectors, so we used one of those adapters that combines two molex into one.

It seemed fine initially, but would always power off instantly when casting a certain spell in Dragon Age 2 - it seems that particular spell must have put the GPU under full load or something, and it must have been triggering some sort of protection on the PSU.

We replaced the PSU with a newer one that had the appropriate connectors, and it was fine then.

So - first, do connect that additional power cable to the motherboard, just in case.

Next, see if you can make it power off by some sort of stress test, maybe Valley or Heaven benchmark, or Cinebench to stress the CPU, or even both at once.

If it powers off when the GPU is fully loaded, check your setup there, make sure you haven't got a loose cable or something. Also I don't know which model of Corsair PSU you have, but check if it's a single rail or multi-rail design. If it's multi-rail, make sure you aren't overloading a single rail by your choice of which power connectors to use.
 
Good idea with the stress tests. Not using any molex or adapters. It can go weeks without doing it, and then the other day powered off 3 times in an hour. Most weird and very hard to troubleshoot.

If can find a way to make it happen that would be a start!
 
Apparently he just told me he ran Ashes benchmarks for CPU stress test and also GPU stress test and it was fine.

Oh.. he says he ran Unigine and it was fine. Doh...

And he says it happens playing Serious Sam or WoW, but never happens in CoD... I'm totally baffled!
 
The problem using benchmarks for diagnosing is that they only stress one component at a time. Both CPU and GPU are large power consumers, and testing one at a time may not demand enough power to trip the PSU.
https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/powermax.html to demand power.
https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html to watch the power draw. (Something that logs to file would be better).

Having to reconnect the power cable strongly implies it is a PSU/Mobo fault, and I'd lean toward the PSU suggestion.
It could also be a thermal issue, and the time it takes to disconnect and reconnect the power cable gives enough time for something to cool down?
Is the fan spinning on the PSU? Is it dusty inside?

As for the games, if he is using VSYNC or an FPS Cap does it still happen?
 
I've arranged to go round next week - think will strip all the power cables out and redo them for a starter and then see what is what.. will check some of the above suggestions and questions whilst there!
 
So.. an update on this..

He managed to find something which would reliably reproduce the power off issue - the initial cut scene in FFXIV Online would cause the PC to power off every time.

This pushed me towards an issue with the GPU and when I looked, the 2 8 pin connectors were on the same cable and the 6 pin on a separate one. I switched them so that a 6+8 were on one and the other 8 pin on the other cable.

All works fine now.. (fingers crossed).

It could have been just reseating the cables, or maybe it did matter how the connectors were powered.. who knows, just glad I managed to figure out the issue!!
 
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