PC shuts down unexpectedly while working under stress after changing cooling settings.
PC shuts down unexpectedly while working under stress after changing cooling settings.
The PC is around four years old. Its specifications are as follows:
Processor:
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with 6 cores
Graphics Card:
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660Ti
Mainboard:
- MSI X570 Gaming Plus
Memory:
- 2x Corsair 32GB 3600MHz RAM
Power Supply:
- Corsair RM750x 80+ Gold
Additional components:
- Case fan + included AMD CPU fan
- Two additional Corsair fans
- Corsair keyboard and mouse
- ASUS 1080p monitor
- HP 1080p monitor
I'm at my wits end, everyone. My PC has started rebooting randomly since this morning. Initially it happened a few minutes after booting, now it only happens when the CPU is under heavy load. Let me go through things step by step.
I work as a cartographer, and yesterday I installed Blender to experiment with 3D relief map rendering. Throughout the day and last night I managed to render without issues. I went to sleep and woke up this morning to resume. But somehow, I thought it would be a good time to tweak the fan curves. My fans have been too loud for a long time. The case fans run at a steady speed, while only the CPU fan changes with temperature (except for GPU and chipset fans, which do so automatically). I restarted the computer, entered the BIOS, and adjusted the fan settings. I lowered their thresholds just a bit to reduce noise during idle. After saving and restarting, I returned to my desktop.
After a few minutes of programs launching, the PC rebooted itself without any error messages. It happened again shortly after. I suspected I might have misconfigured the fan settings—perhaps they were set too high, causing excessive power draw? I adjusted them lower in the BIOS, but the problem persisted. I reset the fans to their factory defaults and still faced random reboots. So I went back to the BIOS and reset everything to the original settings.
When I returned to the desktop, the PC kept rebooting randomly without any warnings. I started troubleshooting.
I realized the issue might be related to a DC fan set to PWM mode, possibly affecting the port on the motherboard. I moved it to a different empty sys_fan port and rebooted. It worked for a short while—about a couple of hours. Then I began rendering in Blender. The PC rebooted itself again. I tried running the PC without the problematic fan plugged in. It restarted within less than a minute.
Next, I unplugged all fans except the CPU fan and it stopped rebooting. However, at that moment, my RAM was showing 2133 even though the XMP profile was enabled. That prompted further investigation.
I encountered numerous computer problems afterward: safe mode launches, PowerShell commands, disk checks, scans, diagnostics, and even BSODs with errors like "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL". Eventually, the issue resolved itself, and my RAM matched the XMP profile settings—no more crashes.
But now, when I run a benchmark test like Cinebench R23, the PC crashes immediately. Even moderate loads that used to work now cause it to crash entirely without any warning.
I’m confused. Is my power supply faulty? It has plenty of capacity and seems in good condition. My motherboard—what’s its real name? Did I accidentally damage it while adjusting the fan settings?
I don’t understand what’s happening! What’s going on with my computer?
Hello there! Could you let me know which BIOS version you're using for your motherboard? And what's the age of your power supply unit?
I refreshed to the latest BIOS from the MSI site earlier today after some troubleshooting. It came out in late June, though I didn’t notice any changes. My PSU is nearly four years old, and all other components are similar except the RAM, which was swapped about seven months ago.