Shutdown while playing--NOT OVERHEATING

Technical Support
1

Hey all,

I will try to describe my problem briefly: my computer shuts down seemingly randomly while playing HOTS. This seems to be a problem for MANY players, but after searching the forum and the internet, I have found no solution.

A run down of what happens: I start up the game, am able to get to hero select, start queueing, USUALLY load the map with no problem, and then shortly after successfully walking around the map, there is a PHYSICAL “click” from my computer, and it instantly shuts off. No lag before, no freezing, no error message, no blue screen. Black screen of my monitor because my computer is OFF.

This is happening to multiple players, but it seems like when the usual recommendation of “check your computer’s temps” is not the solution, the thread on this Blizzard forum just dies, or multiple other players comment saying that they experience the same but with no dev or support member posting to help them.

As evidence of above, please see these posts:

Please read: No, it is not an overheating issue; I’ve tracked the temperature of my computer’s CPU, GPU, and other bits while playing HOTS multiple times. I have a rather higher-end set up, and cooling is NOT an issue. Temperatures have been quite low–nowhere near 80-90 degrees C. Not even approaching it. As a point of reference, my computer can play very high end graphics games at highest settings without stuttering (I won’t mention the games here as different companies, etc.). As an extra comment: no, it does not seem to be a PSU problem, as I’ve run games with much more heavy duty shading, light particle effects, and so on with no issue. For some background, here are the specs of my computer:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.18362 Build 18362
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name STEVEN-PC
System Manufacturer OriginPC
System Model CHRONOS
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU SKU
Processor Intel(R) Core™ i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz, 3696 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 0606, 12/12/2017
SMBIOS Version 3.0
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
BaseBoard Product ROG STRIX Z370-I GAMING
BaseBoard Version Rev X.0x
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State Off
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = “10.0.18362.387”
User Name STEVEN-PC\Steven
Time Zone Eastern Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 32.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 31.9 GB
Available Physical Memory 25.7 GB
Total Virtual Memory 36.7 GB
Available Virtual Memory 28.0 GB
Page File Space 4.75 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection Off
Virtualization-based security Not enabled
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not Modern Standby, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware No
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

I am at a bit of a loss. Does anyone have any insight? Could it be a driver issue? A processing problem? A hardware malfunction? If there is any more info that you might need to look into this more, please let me know and I will post it. It does not seem like Blizzard has so far addressed this issue, or it is rare enough that it has evaded the radar.

Thanks in advance. I would really appreciate at least an explanation if not a solution.

2

Hey, I know this isn’t the reply you’re looking for after 2 days of going unanswered but I just wanted to let you know that I am having this issue too. It only happens on Infernal Shrines when the shrine is active. My screen will go black and I have to restart my computer to fix it. I made a post about it but only got one reply that didn’t help at all. I really wish they would acknowledge this issue and fix it.

3

Happened in Brawl just now too. Screen went completely black and only a hard restart from pulling the plug helped.

4

Hello TheDoctor and Vultimate,

I’m sorry that you two are facing issues involving a black screen. I hope they fix that issue–however, my issue is not that I face a black screen with my computer still running. My issue is that my computer literally turns off. The “black screen” of my monitor is just from it not receiving any input, and then I get the “No signal” notification from my monitor. It seems like our technical issues are different, or at least they appear that way.

5

Well I also get the “No signal” message from my monitor but it is true that my computer is still running until I press the power button. Our issues may not be exactly the same but they are very similar.

6

Hey, drsteve! You asked earlier on, if this could be a driver issue, which is most definitely a yes. Especially with the monitor going blank with No Signal. Driver would be my prime concern, otherwise, it could be the monitor cable and some sort of data transmission issue.

As far as I have seen, this isn’t a consistent issue with a noticeable trend. It’s usually going to be a driver or hardware issue. The game itself shouldn’t have power alone to cause this, but rather it may be triggering something like a driver or monitor cable to stop the graphics from being displayed. We have a support article about computers restarting or shutting down.

Let’s try the following:

  • Use the Display Driver Uninstaller to cleanly reinstall the drivers.
  • Try a different monitor cable. If it is a multimonitor set up, try just one monitor.
  • While not supported, resetting the CMOS may help. Please reach out to a local technician if you’re unsure on how to reset the CMOS. Most motherboards have an easy battery that can be removed, while some may need jumpers.

I am a bit concerned that you hear a physical click from your computer though… This could maybe be a fan, an issue with a capacitor (usually more of a pop), or something in the power supply. With this happening, I would definitely have a local technician take a look at the computer to avoid any potential damage to a core component on the system like the graphics or motherboard.

7

This is a relay in your PSU turning off. Quite literally your PSU is shutting down. This will only happen if the motherboard instructs the PSU to do so or the PSU is forced to shutdown due to overload or overheat conditions.

The problem is almost certainly hardware related. Computers do not shut themselves off when under heavy load otherwise. That said it can also be how your hardware is configured.

As an example a person I helped had this exact same problem expect when running another game (X4) only during startup of the game. The startup process would run for 2-3 secs then click, power out. During the startup the game would load all CPU threads at 100%, giving it performance similar to Prime95 as far as CPU power load goes. Turns out the cause was thermal overload due to auto overlocking a Ryzen 2xxx processor, resulting in either the PSU or VRM forcing a shutdown when it overheated (which of those two I did not find out). Simply by removing the overclock the game worked perfectly and the system no longer shutdown under any kind of load.

And the thermals of the PSU? The CPU VRM? The memory VRM? There are a lot of thermals in computers that are not visible from within the OS and these can cause safety shutdowns.

One cannot make that assumption. HotS is based on SC2 which is notorious for killing GPUs due to how hard it makes them work. For example the NVidia GT 8800 ran TES Oblivion at well past max at 60 FPS no problem, but get it to run SC2 and the VRM usually fries itself in a matter of minutes, literally, with SC2 claiming the lives of several thousand of such cards over the years. It is very well possible that other games generate different GPU loads that do not use as much power, even if the graphics are a lot more complicated and demanding in the end.

The biggest killer for SC2 and even HotS? The main menu and loading screens since without frame rate limits both could load GPUs at near 100% and any sort of hardware issue would quickly manifest as a driver crash or worse. At some stage since alpha HotS added a frame rate limit to those screens to prevent this, however nothing stops gameplay hitting absurd frame rates on fast processors and doing something similar.

You can try running some stress tests to see if they recreate the spontaneous shutdown. Use Prime95 and Cinebench R20 all core tests to stress CPU (and hence motherboard VRM). For GPU use Furmark. Only 1 such test can be run at a time, and should run reliably for 5+ minutes on correctly functioning hardware. If either test causes a shutdown then something is wrong with the hardware (PSU, cooling, VRM) or how it is configured (overclocks). If all tests do not cause such shutdown then the problem is more difficult to diagnose, and may only manifest if both CPU and GPU are under high load.

8

Hello Caterpepi and DrSuperGood,

Thank you both so much for responding to my post. I read through your suggestions and have a couple of updates:

  • It is not the monitor cable.
  • I actually have a correction to my original post–my computer immediately shuts off and RESTARTS on its own. Not sure if that changes anything diagnostically.
  • I used the Display Driver Uninstaller and followed the instructions as listed and updated my NVIDIA driver, but the same problem happened. I loaded HoTS, everything was fine throughout to character select, then when I loaded into an AI game I saw a second or two of the map and my computer shut down.
  • I ran Prime95 for more than 5 minutes and monitored the temps. The CPU did not go higher than 82 degrees C and did not cause a shutdown/restart. On stop of the test it immediately dropped down to 45 degrees, then lower.
  • I ran Furmark for more than 5 minutes and monitored the temps. The GPU did not go higher than 70 degrees C and did not cause a shutdown/restart.
  • I more understand what you mean, DrSuperGood, about it potentially still being a PSU issue. Thank you. It is still strange that the main menu and loading screens do not cause this issue for me, though, if that is the case. How could I go about investigating that further?

Caterpepi, I suppose I will have to reach out to a technician to inquire about the general problem / perhaps reset the CMOS? I’m not sure if it could be a capacitor or not–it’s hard to describe such a short sound but it does sound more like a click than a “pop”.

DrSuperGood, with these results of the stress tests, is it still possible that it could be thermal overload? Does overclocking have any role here? I wouldn’t think that I would be overclocking when opening HoTS, unless it was already set to do that. This system was pre-built and underwent multiple stress tests before shipment.

It is very strange that this is the only game that this happens on. It’s even stranger that I was able to play a few full games of HoTS before this started happening, too, making me think it was related to a certain map etc. (I didn’t change anything in between being able to play and this event occurring, to my knowledge.)

9

As I mentioned in my post, the main menu and loading screens used to cause this sort of problem. However somewhere after alpha Blizzard added an automatic FPS cap for those scenes, limiting frame rate to 60 FPS (or maybe display refresh rate) to stop loading the GPU excessively hard when frame rate was uncapped. Before these scenes used to hit 200+ FPS, even on weaker GPUs.

Unfortunately I do not know of a combined CPU and GPU test that loads both to max.

A possibly line of inquiry would be to test a clean install of Windows 10 if the issue persists. This would rule out all driver or software compatibility related causes.

Click is likely the PSU mains disconnect relay. In order to maintain high efficiency ratings such as Gold and above, the main power conversion circuitry is disconnected when not in use. Such circuitry is used to provide the 12V rail for GPU can CPU, standby is provided by a separate circuit that always remains energized.

My Corsair power supply makes such a sound every time I turn my computer off or even send it to sleep.

Possibly with the PSU, or chipset. Chipset temps should be checkable with HWInfo however.

Yes. Overclocking can cause shutdowns and restarts when unstable. Watch any sort of overclocking live stream and one can see it happens a lot when unstable values are entered.

Overclocking is something the user must actively enable at the BIOS level. Just running a game should not turn a system from running stock to overclock. However some OEMs might ship systems which are pre-overclocked.

One though that occurred to me. Check Event Viewer as to what caused the reported shutdown. For example does it say unexpected power interrupt or something like that?

10

DrSuperGood,

Good idea! I didn’t remember that there was an event viewer. It looks like it did capture the event and the same events that happened before:

Level: Critical
Source: Kernel-Power
Event ID: 41
Task Category: (63)
General: The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
Details:

  • System

    • Provider

    [ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
    [ Guid] {331c3b3a-2005-44c2-ac5e-77220c37d6b4}

    EventID 41

    Version 6

    Level 1

    Task 63

    Opcode 0

    Keywords 0x8000400000000002

    • TimeCreated

    [ SystemTime] 2019-12-04T04:29:26.386062000Z

    EventRecordID 8471

    Correlation

    • Execution

    [ ProcessID] 4
    [ ThreadID] 8

    Channel System

    Computer Steven-PC

    • Security

    [ UserID] S-1-5-18

  • EventData

    BugcheckCode 0
    BugcheckParameter1 0x0
    BugcheckParameter2 0x0
    BugcheckParameter3 0x0
    BugcheckParameter4 0x0
    SleepInProgress 0
    PowerButtonTimestamp 0
    BootAppStatus 0
    Checkpoint 0
    ConnectedStandbyInProgress false
    SystemSleepTransitionsToOn 0
    CsEntryScenarioInstanceId 0
    BugcheckInfoFromEFI false
    CheckpointStatus 0

I’m not sure if any of the above is helpful at all to you. I am open to reinstalling windows, turning off overclocking, etc. I can also check with HWInfo; I’ve been using Speccy to monitor temps.

11

Hey there,

The root issue sounds like it may be related to hardware components failing for whatever reason. I’m afraid that this is outside of our scope of support. The best thing to do would be to contact a local PC tech for hardware testing.

12

You could try running “powerMAX” from CPU-ID. That seems to have a combined CPU and GPU stress test which can push the entire system to approximately 90%+ of its theoretical maximum power usage. This load should be far worse than any real application or game will ever produce.

If the system does not shutdown when running such a test then the issue is very unlikely to be PSU or overheating related. If one installs a clean Windows 10 install and checks if the issue persists one can then rule out driver or OS corruption as a possible cause. In such a case it could only be some sort of obscure defect that some part of HotS runs into and most games do not, such as a defective instruction or operation on either the CPU or GPU.