Desktop Shutting Down

[m1thr4nd1r]

Hi,

From some time now it happens that my screen loses it's signal (and changing the connectors of the video card or replugging the cables doesn't help). The first thing I though was that my video card might be a tiny bit broken , but since it wasn't common I left it as it is.

Sunday, I was using the computer normally and suddenly it shut down without any warning. And it didn't even wanted to start again, but then I changed the power cable and it got back to work again.

Today while I was using it (again, nothing too hard on the hardware) it suddenly shut down again. Rebooted it and tried playing Borderlands 2, it starts and then after some time shut down again. Tried it 3 times with the same results.

Just Now I tried running a different game (NFS: Most Wanted) and it played for a while (longer than Borderlands 2) but it still shut down.

So, what can all that mean? Is there a way to do a software test on my hardware? Can the video card shutdown the computer ?

System Specs:
Intel Sandy Bridge Core I7 2600 3.40GHz Quad Box
Nvidia Geforce GTX 580
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1333MHz
Corsair 800W | GS800
Gigabyte (Sandy-Bridge) | GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3
Corsair WaterCooler | Corsair Hydro H60

PS: On none of the problems did the desktop temperature was high (I believe it hasn't passed 70 Celsius on the GPU)

 

[Ketchup]

There are a few things you can be looking at here, but you already covered #1 - temps. So I'll start with:
#2. Are you overclocking the CPU at all? If so, set it back to stock for now.
#3. Are you getting blue screens when this happens? If so, you need to make note of the error messages.

 

[m1thr4nd1r]

#2. No overclock.
#3. No blue screens

 

[Ketchup]

Most likely it's power supply or RAM then. Power supplies are hard to test. With the RAM, you could load Memtest onto a CD or flash drive and boot off of that, or you can run one stick at a time and see if the probably goes away (assuming you have more than one stick.)

I think if it is not giving you a blue screen, it is probably not the memory. However, the blue screen may be going to quickly to see it. You may want to disable the auto restart in Startup and Recovery just to be sure.

 

[m1thr4nd1r]

Sorry for the late reply, but I needed some time to bang my head at memtest until I finally gave up and burnt the iso on a cd `

Memtest ended with no errors, and I disabled auto-restart but it keeps restarting

 

[denis280]

Can the video card shutdown the computer ?

Yes it can.if you have the last driver on it.i would get the one from march. and perform a clean install

 

[m1thr4nd1r]

Ok, reinstalled the driver. From a brief test things seems to be going well. On the weekend I shall have more updates

 

[m1thr4nd1r]

Yes it can.if you have the last driver on it.i would get the one from march. and perform a clean install

I thought it was solved after that but no deal. PC still freezes and the only way to reboot is to hold down the reset button

 

[m1thr4nd1r]

So, the problem persists even after installing a older driver. The new thing is that now the PC just freezes and the only way to reboot/shut down is to hold down the proper button. Any thoughts?

 

[Plan.B]

With that setup you can run the mobo's integrated graphics, yes? Remove video card, get into bios and set graphics for integrated. Also try both the vga and dvi mobo outputs. If it runs without error, the video card may be defective, or the reduced power draw is allowing the system to run normally. If you still have problems, its not the video card. Either way, you will need to look at the psu. Easiest way to check that is swap in a known good psu and see what happens.

Other things to try, in order:

Remove mobo from case, put on cardboard or something non-conductive, to eliminate the possibility of a short between the mobo and the case.

Run bare minimum hardware to get into bios: 1 stick ram, no disks, onboard gpu.

Re-seat cpu cooler.

Clear cmos.

Boot to bios, load default settings.

Shut down, add one piece of hardware at a time, reboot, repeat if no errors.

 

[denis280]

what is the hdd on this. and by the way did you perform a clean install for the driver

 

[mannox]

try system restore

 

[m1thr4nd1r]

what is the hdd on this. and by the way did you perform a clean install for the driver

I did perform a clean install

With that setup you can run the mobo's integrated graphics, yes? Remove video card, get into bios and set graphics for integrated. Also try both the vga and dvi mobo outputs. If it runs without error, the video card may be defective, or the reduced power draw is allowing the system to run normally. If you still have problems, its not the video card. Either way, you will need to look at the psu. Easiest way to check that is swap in a known good psu and see what happens.

Other things to try, in order:

Remove mobo from case, put on cardboard or something non-conductive, to eliminate the possibility of a short between the mobo and the case.

Run bare minimum hardware to get into bios: 1 stick ram, no disks, onboard gpu.

Re-seat cpu cooler.

Clear cmos.

Boot to bios, load default settings.

Shut down, add one piece of hardware at a time, reboot, repeat if no errors.

Some friends came along last week and did a bit of inspection on the desktop, we reconnected the ram and GPU and so far it hasn't happened anymore. If the problem goes back I will reply here, but at any rate thank you for your answers