What The Hell? Random Reboot Issue - New Hardware Hasn't Fixed It!

SineDave

SineDave

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 9, 2004
Messages
414
Hi Guys,

I don't normally post here looking for help, since like most of you I've been building/repairing/troubleshooting my own rigs for 20+ years, but this time I'm seriously confused.

A couple of weeks ago my trusty i7-4770K/Sabertooth Z87 rig suddenly rebooted on me during a game, and wouldn't come back on. The monitor would flicker, and while resetting CMOS and performing all the standard troubleshooting steps (no GPU, memory one stick at a time etc) would get me into BIOS for a few seconds, the PC would reboot again.

After a lot of troubleshooting (including using iGPU only), Asus finally agreed to an RMA. I received the MB back about 10 days later, with a simple note stating they could not reproduce the problem, and flashed the BIOS to the latest version.

Ok, fair enough. This machine is quite old already, so I decide to just replace the CPU/MB/Memory and PSU.

As of last night, I installed a Gigabyte Aorus Z370 Gaming 7, i7-8086K, 32GB of G-Skill Ripjaws V memory and an EVGA Supernova 1200 P2 PSU. I reinstall my Asus Strix GTX 1080, and proceed to reinstall Windows 10. Temps are excellent across the board - and nothing has gotten remotely close to thermal limits. My GPU hit ~65C during Furmark, but that's it.

Here's a screencap of temps during AIDA64 GPU + CPU stability test:

aU3BsL8.png



I got Divinity Original Sin 2 installed, and got my friends into the game. Not 20 minutes goes by, and my machine just reboots. This repeats itself a couple of times before I begin to troubleshoot further. All I see in event viewer is event ID 41 - unexpected restart. I begin to google the issue, and while I am away from the PC to get some water, it reboots again, this time just at the Windows desktop. This morning, I left it running Divinity 2 before I ran some errands, and came back to see it had rebooted 3 times:

upload_2018-9-15_13-13-54.png


I have run Furmark, OCCT and Unigine Valley on the machine with no noticeable issues, and then out of nowhere it will suddenly reboot.

**Edit** I was able to get the machine to start boot looping after running the OCCT Power Supply Test for ~10 min. Swapped in my HTPC's 1060, and will test again.

So - even with the 1060, still getting reboots. This is seriously messed up.

I've also done the following:
  • Unplug all USB devices other than the Keyboard/Mouse
  • Remove the previous power strip and replace it with a Furman strip I use in the home theater

I am leaning towards the GPU being the issue, as it's the only hardware (other than 3 SSDs) that isn't new.

Any ideas/thoughts on this? I'm getting seriously frustrated.
 
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In my opinion, given what you've already replaced, power is your most likely candidate. By power I mean power at the wall, or your actual stupid power cable, not your PSU. Plug it in somewhere else in the house, or bring it over to a buddy's house and see if it freaks out there. It's also possible, and would be super stupid, that your physical reset key on the chassis is shorting out or something, so go ahead and unplug that just in case.

Beyond that, it's pretty confusing.
 
^that's a good suggestion. only other thing to try, if I read right, is another gpu.
 
Also, don't run Furmark. It isn't even a real benchmark anymore since it's been throttled by the Nv drivers for like...4+ years?
 
I was under the impression he's since swapped out for a GTX 1060 and still had reboots. So happens with multiple GPUs.
 
You said the GPU is the only thing that isn't new? So you have an old power supply laying around?

I'd swap out the power supply (the old one will do) and see if it still happens. I always lean towards power supply or ram when weird things happen.
 
HDD/SSD's and SATA cables and power cord seems the only things left.
 
Unplug your front panel button connector, or better yet pizza box the machine to remove the case entirely. I've seen this twice in the last 3-4 months and it was bad reset switches causing the problem.
 
So I unplugged all the drives and the case headers, just left my NVME main drive connected to the motherboard. No reboots/issues at all.

So we are down to an SSD/HDD or the case. I am thinking it's the case
 
I spilt pickled onion juice on my keyboard one time and it caused random reboots like you describe. Gave BSODs actually. Took me AGES to figure it out, lol.

So yeah, try different keyboard and/or mouse, you might be surprised... o_O
 
SineDave said:
So I unplugged all the drives and the case headers, just left my NVME main drive connected to the motherboard. No reboots/issues at all.

So we are down to an SSD/HDD or the case. I am thinking it's the case
Click to expand...
or a bad cable maybe.
 
I would plug the HDD back in..then the SSD 1 at a time..last would be the case headers. 1 at a time...give time in between. ( my money is on the case header)
 
AP514 said:
I would plug the HDD back in..then the SSD 1 at a time..last would be the case headers. 1 at a time...give time in between. ( my money is on the case header)
Click to expand...
LigTasm said:
Unplug your front panel button connector, or better yet pizza box the machine to remove the case entirely. I've seen this twice in the last 3-4 months and it was bad reset switches causing the problem.
Click to expand...

You're right.. it was the case headers. Time to replace my trusty Fractal Design Define R4.
 
SineDave said:
You're right.. it was the case headers. Time to replace my trusty Fractal Design Define R4.
Click to expand...

It may be under warranty still? Reach out to fractal and ask if they can send you the front headers. Usually just a few screws holding it in. At worst it would be a couple $ although I totally get the urge to change my cases all the time so I wouldn't blame you for doing that either.
 
Replacing a faulty front I/O shouldn't be much trouble.

SineDave have you tried contacting our support team yet at support.fractal-design.com to see about getting a replacement? Every case comes with a 2 year warranty but even if that's passed I'm sure we can still get you whichever part you're needing free of charge if you can cover the shipping.
 
Fractal Design NA said:
Replacing a faulty front I/O shouldn't be much trouble.

SineDave have you tried contacting our support team yet at support.fractal-design.com to see about getting a replacement? Every case comes with a 2 year warranty but even if that's passed I'm sure we can still get you whichever part you're needing free of charge if you can cover the shipping.
Click to expand...
Fractal Design NA thank you for the kind offer! I couldn't resist the opportunity to buy a Define R6 USB-C :D
 
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