System restarts when under stress
System restarts when under stress
Hey everyone, just wanted to share what’s been going on with my system. I’ve been experiencing random reboots when under stress, especially with CPU-intensive programs. It seems to happen more often when the PC is under any kind of load. At first, I considered overheating, but it never reaches above 80°C before shutting down. I thought it might be a CPU issue, but switching to another CPU didn’t solve the problem. The same issue persists even without overclocking.
I ran memtest86 and it passed, so memory isn’t the culprit. Stress testing the GPU showed no crashes either. My only guesses are related to power supply or motherboard—though I don’t have spares and I’m not keen on buying a new one just to check. I’ve reinstalled drivers, updated BIOS and chipset, but nothing changed.
During crashes, the Event Viewer from WHEA-Logger reports an error: “A fatal hardware error has occurred” (event ID 18). I’ve looked it up, but most sources point to a faulty CPU. It’s unlikely both CPUs I tried are defective. Anyone have any insights or fixes?
Here’s what I have:
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
- NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti
- Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2x8GB
- MSI MAG X570S
- Tomahawk Max motherboard
- Corsair RM850e Gold 850W PSU
- Loop 240mm AIO
- Samsung 970 EVO 250GB M.2 SSD
- Seagate Barracuda 4TB HDD
- Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 21H2
Let me know if you need anything else!
It doesn’t appear to be a PSU problem because you’re encountering an error rather than the PC shutting down completely. The situation isn’t ideal for testing, but your GPU is consuming more than twice the power of your CPU. You might run separate stress tests—one focused on the GPU and another on the CPU—to isolate the issue. If only the CPU crashes under load, it’s less likely to be a power supply fault. It could also point to a faulty motherboard, given its role as the primary connection point for the CPU. Diagnosing this will be more challenging, often requiring a swap to confirm. RAM issues are possible too, but they can be checked independently using tools like memtest or Prime95 with adjusted settings.
Adjusting my RAM speed to 3600mhz seems to have resolved the initial issue, but I’m now facing another challenge. My computer is extremely slow and unresponsive. In games that previously offered over 60 FPS, I now see only about 20 frames if I’m lucky. Even launching the browser to record this was very slow.
You've already checked GPU, CPU, and RAM, and the problem only appears during CPU stress tests. This suggests a potential motherboard issue. There are ways to verify without replacing the board—consider running diagnostics or tests that focus specifically on the CPU side, such as benchmarking under load or checking for overheating. If you're unsure, you could also try booting into safe modes or using software tools that isolate CPU performance. This might help determine if the motherboard is the root cause without needing a full replacement.
It's uncertain, but the motherboard seems likely to be the issue. I'm not sure how to verify without replacing it. If the store's return policy allows it, you might get it back. Does the board have any built-in diagnostics, such as a small indicator or display showing error codes?
They don’t use flashing lights or blinking signals to show problems.
When it starts, the CPU shows red for a short time, then the VGA appears white briefly, and finally the boot process turns yellow upon startup. The motherboard manual seems to suggest turning it on if an error occurs, which likely means these color changes are part of the standard boot sequence.