Occasional system failures during typical usage
Occasional system failures during typical usage
your system experiences random crashes followed by a restart cycle, similar to thermal issues. this occurred within the last hour. after running memtest without issues and enduring three hours of heavy use without crashes, it seems load isn't the main cause. someone could help identify the underlying problem. your hardware includes an i7-4770, radeon rx560, and a 450w power supply—details about which parts are available online might be useful.
The signs don't suggest a thermal problem. Attempt to run the system with minimal components to check if symptoms continue. Disconnect GPU and all peripherals except the boot drive, insert just one RAM stick. Connect power to the 24-pin ATX, 8-pin CPU, and single boot drive. Connect your monitor via onboard HDMI. Consider reapplying and reseating the CPU cooler to rule it out. If issues remain, verify BIOS updates and reinstall Windows to eliminate driver conflicts. On a fresh setup, reinstall the GPU and update chipset and video drivers. If the problem persists, it likely points to hardware—mobo, CPU, or PSU.
I agree with KingPizza, I use a very similar setup as the Plex server now. It’s running 4770k with an Asus mb and I was experiencing random reboots. After switching the power supply, the issue stopped. Since that’s the most affordable choice, if what KingPizza recommends isn’t viable, consider upgrading the PSU. Invest in a quality one—capacitors are wearing out, a solid PSU can prolong its life. You’re looking at a system over nine years old, and I’m glad every day it keeps running. It was an excellent CPU when it launched.
I just set up the nh-u9s so the cooler fits properly, and the BIOS version is the latest I believe (around 2015). Connecting my second monitor via the onboard HDMI seems to have improved stability—it only crashed after about eight hours yesterday. It crashes mainly when under heavy load, but running it with minimal resources wouldn’t require much RAM (Windows uses around 3GB). I plan to reset Windows using the media creation tool and see if that helps. Edit: Should I delete my files or just remove settings and apps?
Yes, we confirmed the test was performed without a GPU or additional drives, and the system still experienced a crash.
This was merely inserting the monitor into the onboard HDMI port.
After reinstalling Windows, it restarts smoothly after a short pause without any issues. This seems to occur only after extended usage periods (over 6 hours). I observed it happening specifically when using YouTube on my second monitor. It also happened when Firefox, Discord, Steam, Openhardwaremonitor, WhatsApp, and Radeon Software were active, suggesting Firefox might be involved since everything else has been running for about two years now. The problem started recently after switching to Firefox.