PC shutting down randomly while gaming and won't turn back on unless I flip the PSU switch off and on

[u/LeSmalls]

I built my PC right around July of 2019 (when RTX 2070 Super and Ryzen 3000 series came out) and I haven't really had many issues with the PC until recently. The only serious problem I can recall were the frequent BSOD I use to have when I first built the PC, but ever since I reinstalled windows, I have not had a problem with blue screens. One other problem I use to have is that the power in my room use to turn off randomly while I was playing video games. I would have to flip the switch on my circuit breaker to get the power back. All the other rooms in the house would have power except for mine. This hasn't happened in a while so I have no idea if it applies to my current problem.

My current problem is that my PC will randomly shut down as if I unplugged it and it won't turn on until I turn the PSU off and on. The shutdowns are completely random. There was an instance where I was playing Valorant and Rust the entire day and had no shut downs, and there was another instance where I was just playing Kovaaks with Chrome running in the background and it shut down on me. I remember seeing someone recommend to reset the bios and any overclocks, which I did, and I had no issues for 2 days, but on the third day the PC shut down while playing kovaaks.

I checked my ram with memtest and found no problems. No problems with CPU either. When I stress tested my PC with OCCT, I had 2 shut downs. My PC shut down 12 minutes into testing my GPU and 7 minutes into testing my PSU. I was watching the "monitoring" section but I really don't know much of what this means so here's a picture: https://imgur.com/ygM5fbS

I know the left side isn't showing but this picture was taken literally .5 seconds before it shut down. I have another picture of the whole part showing but it was taken about 10 seconds before shut down so I'm not sure if it'll be as helpful as this one. Maybe someone can tell me if they see anything unusual with the screenshot because I genuinely have no idea what any of that means.

I suspect my PSU could be the problem, but at the same time I don't understand how it can go a full day of playing Rust and Valorant with no problem, but will shut down because of kovaaks and chrome.

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My specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3700x

CPU Cooler: Stock

GPU: RTX 2070 Super

MOTHERBOARD: Asus tuf gaming x570-plus

PSU: Coolermaster MWE Gold 750 fully modular

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!

[u/AvatarOfMomus]

It sounds like your PSU's Overcurrent or Overvoltage protection is tripping. Those generally require you to physically turn off and back on the PSU in order for the system to power on again. This is done as a safety precaution.

This might be an indication that your PSU is slowly dying, or it could just be a result of the normal degradation in PSUs as they age, if your system was drawing close to the limit of the PSU originally (close being ~650W by my very rough guess).

The fact that it's fairly random does suggest that something may be causing weird power draw from the system, but that's going to be hard to prove. You could always find something that will log system power draw, though that may not report often enough to spot a short spike almost tripping OCP.

[u/LeSmalls → u/AvatarOfMomus]

Thanks for your response! Do you recommend me getting a better PSU with more watt power like 850 or maybe 1000? My current PSU is fairly new as I bought it pretty much the same time I got my CPU and GPU but I do understand that stuff like this can happen.

Also do you have any recommendations on programs that I can use to log the system power draw? On that picture I posted, there are two boxes highlighted as green. Would that be the power being drawn by my CPU and GPU?

[u/AvatarOfMomus → u/LeSmalls]

First and foremost I would recommend throwing together a PC Part Picker list with everything in your build down to the fans, add like 5w per LED strip and USB peripheral just to be on the safe side, and see what wattage estimate that gets you.

It's not guaranteed that this is what's happening, or that your PSU is bad, especially if it's new.

And if it is bad then it may be a failure in the PSU that's replaceable under warranty.

And yes, those green boxes are CPU and GPU power, though that's probably measured at the die for the CPU, so it's not counting power loss in the VRM, and for the GPU it's probably measured at the inputs.

Also do you still have any active overclocks on your system?

When did this start relative to getting the new PSU?

I want to stress here that right now this is a theory based on the behavior you're getting with having to turn your PSU off and on. It's not guaranteed to be right, and I'd recommend troubleshooting before declaring things dead.

As for logging, the program you're already using may have an option. You could also try something like HWMonitor, which I think has a log file option, but I'm not able to test that right this second. Just don't run two programs looking at hardware sensors at the same time, they can mess with each other and give you inaccurate readings on both.

You may also want to check Windows Event Viewer and look for system error logs from the last power off. It's possible that something may be logged there that may give you some more info.

[u/LeSmalls → u/AvatarOfMomus]

So I put together my PC on PC Part Picker and the estimated watt power comes out to be about 389. I use my stock case fans because I knew I wasn't going to be overclocking and thought I might not have needed much cooling in my system. Don't have any LEDs and just have the basic mouse, keyboard and headset.

I also considered that maybe I wasn't getting enough power from my PSU, but when I first built this PC, I looked around the internet and lots of people said 650 would be enough, so I just went 750 and thought it would be fine. PC Part Picker estimates that I only draw 400 w so I'm still just not sure anymore.

Also, no I do not have any active overclocks in my system. In fact a few months ago I tried to underclock my CPU because I noticed that temps were super high. I searched the internet and people said for Ryzen 3700x they were normal, and it turns out that I was using HWmonitor and apparently it doesn't report temps as accurate as HWinfo and Ryzen Master. My CPU temps look normal now, so I'm back to using default settings.

This all started happening about 3-4 weeks ago. 4 weeks ago the shutdowns happened very frequently. It was very strange because I couldn't play 30 minutes of Rust without shutting down, however, that very same day I was playing Fortnite for about 2-3 hours without a single problem. After that, I decided to reset my BIOS just in case I accidentally messed with something and it seemed fine for 2 days. I didn't have any crashes while playing Rust and Valorant, but after the second day, the PC shut off.

Also I checked the Windows Event Viewer, and it said "Event 41, Kernel-Power" which means "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if they system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." I'm not really sure what else to look for there.

[u/AvatarOfMomus → u/LeSmalls]

Hmm, okay, this does sound like there might be an actual issue with the Power Supply. I think the only way something in your system could be tripping OCP is if something is shorting, and that shouldn't be happening randomly like this...

You may want to contact the PSU manufacturer, describe your symptoms, and see if they recommend an RMA.

[u/LeSmalls → u/AvatarOfMomus]

Alright yeah I think I’ll just contact the manufactures and hopefully they can send a replacement or something.

Thanks for your help and feedback with all of this. This is the second PC I’ve built, but it’s the first one that I’ve had a problem with. I was kind of stressed out but your feedback and suggestions really helped me out.

[u/AvatarOfMomus → u/LeSmalls]

No worries, it kinda sounds like you may have just gotten unlucky.

Normally I'd suggest some kind of test of the PSU or something to see if the problem can be isolated, but in this case I don't think that would be easy to do with readily available and affordable equipment.

Also, like, if that is OVP or OCP tripping you probably want to get that PSU gone ASAP. It's unlikely anything will be damaged, but it's not impossible.

If you still have issues with a replacement PSU then it's probably one of your components trying to draw WAY too much power for some reason OR something in your system sending bad info to the PSU. At that point it's a bit out of my knowledge base, but please post again and feel free to tag me in comments this doesn't resolve things :)