The PC powers down immediately when I begin playing Diablo IV.
The PC powers down immediately when I begin playing Diablo IV.
Observing Prime95 caused the CPU temperature to rise significantly, prompting further investigation. I discovered that MSI motherboards typically leave PL1/PL2 uncapped and include a "CPU lite load mode" that applies overvoltage. I adjusted the temperatures to Intel's limits (125/181W) and rerun Prime95, which stabilized at around 90°C during load and settled near 75°C afterward. This level is still high considering my cooling solution. When I tried Furmark on top of Prime95 with the GPU limited to 80% TDP, the system crashed again. It appears that even with the CPU restricted to a maximum of 181W and the GPU capped at 80%, the combined stress leads to shutdowns. I suspect the power supply unit may have worn out over time and can't manage both loads effectively. Under normal conditions and when stressing just one component, the system remains stable, but performance drops sharply during simultaneous high loads like gaming or intensive tests.
I replaced the PSU with a 1000W unit and conducted some stability checks: Prime95 (small FTTs) plus Furmark (4k+8xMSAA) for half an hour. The system stayed steady—CPU peaked at 85°C, GPU at 70°C, and Cinebench R23 scored around 70 with a max of 81°C on the Intel XTU stress test using AVX2. I also re-launched Diablo IV and explored a city map; the game ran without crashing, though I wasn’t sure if those quick tests were fully reliable. In the BIOS I limited both power limits to 181W (raising PL1 from 125W) and set CPU Lite Load to Mode 2, which gave the best Cinebench result. I’m considering reverting to Mode 1 since temperatures were slightly lower and the score was almost identical. With PL1 at 181W, the CPU consistently hit 5.1GHz on the P-cores instead of dropping to 4.8/4.9GHz at 125W.