Overwatch Causing PC Reboots

Technical Support
1

For several weeks now, playing Overwatch has been causing my PC to suddenly crash and instantly reboot. Nothing freezes beforehand. I’m given no warning or any BSOD screens. My PC literally just shuts off and restarts immediately afterwards.

It’s strange, but this has only been happening with Overwatch. At first I thought it was an overheating issue or the game taxing my PC. But my temps haven’t been drastic or anything and I even took the time to clean my PC and re-apply thermal paste. The issue continues to persist.

I’ve tried other games and any of my art programs or rendering software. Other programs that stress my PC out even more than Overwatch do not cause this problem at all. It’s just this one game.

Synmptoms I’ve noticed in relation to the reboots:

  1. It never happens mid-match. (Or at least it has yet to happen.)

  2. The crash and then reboot occurs either at the start-up of a match (on the hero selection screen) or just entering a match after finding one (just before H screen).

  3. OR after finishing a match. Before returning to the main menu.

  4. It occasionally happens on the main menu, when I try to look at my social list or the like.

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2

I think the reason your PC keeps shutting down by itself is because it’s overheating. Most modern computers are programmed to do that. What I’d recommend is checking your PC’s temperature constantly while playing the game. Also if the case is overheating, make sure you get that fixed, if your computer keeps shutting down by itself it can actually damage it.

1 Like
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I forgot to mention this in the initial post but I have been checking my temperatures. I’ve had temp checks up and running on my second monitor while I’ve played Overwatch, routinely checking to see when the temps spike; if at all. The only somewhat worrying spike has been when I’ve opened up Overwatch the first time. And the crashes never happen then.

My temperatures are actually normal just as the crash happens from what I can catch since the shut down is instant.

I’ve tried Furmark, Prime95, Unigine, other stress tests and benchmarks. All of them increase my temperatures more than Overwatch and none of them have caused these instant crashes and reboots. Or any type of crash at all.

For the record, I mentioned in my first post that I did clean my PC, re-applied thermal paste, etc. I make sure to keep it as cool as possible since I built it myself.

Overheating doesn’t seem to be the issue. It’s just this game giving me problems.

4

I was having the same issue as you. I replaced the PSU and the problem went away. I had a 600 watt and swapped it with an 850 watt. The game would play on the low setting with the 600 watt but would reboot when I upped it to medium setting or higher. I assume the low setting was pulling just under the 600 watt threshold which allowed the game to play. I’ve had overheating issues with other PCs and the machine would just shut off and not auto reboot like it will when the PSU is overtaxed. I doubt your issue is an overheating one, sounds like you need a beefier PSU.

5

I also had issues with my computer randomly rebooting/shutting down and didn’t notice anything odd with my computer temperatures, so I went ahead and replaced the PSU. Haven’t had any issues since. I don’t know if it’s necessarily Overwatch because on my end, Overwatch didn’t really trigger its shutting off/rebooting.

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I had this issue yesterday as well, does anyone know a fix for this problem.

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did you ever find a fix for this problem? i am having the same one.

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Pc shutting down = Most likely hardwear fault.

Faulty PSU > Overheating CPU > Faulty RAM.

Either one is not good your first task is the clean your pc (especially CPU fan) of dust.

Secondly you are going to want to run a mem diagnostics in windows.

9

Hi,

I have the same problem, only in Overwatch, made also a post:

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I’m not a computer genius but I think its the CPU overheating, eg for me everytime i think i’ve fixed the issue later it crops up again (replacing PSU/graphics cards/swapping RAM etc/been dealing with this for years) and this problem never happens when playing eg ‘paladins’

Conclusion: overwatch has some stupid glitch/problem that creates overheating on non pro/serious gamers

what am I talking about? look up how ‘overwatch’ sometimes the pc hogs up 80%-90% CPU usage, some people don’t get it because these serious gamers have good cooling, I think overwatch itself is seriously stressing out peoples pcs (more specifically the CPU)

i’m going to try one last solution which is a special cooling from ‘corsair’, it looks small and easy to install ( [Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H60v2 ]

if this fails i’m getting a new pre-setup pc (i’m over the days of making my own pc)

11

For me the reason was too small cooler on my CPU. The CPU isn’t even the strongest (i5 8600k) but installing one of the largest coolers (NH-D15) solved the problem.

Before getting a large cooler the PC rebooted only with Overwatch. Sometimes once a day. Sometimes every 10 minutes. I tried to change all possible system settings, checked for loose cables, disassembled/reassembled the whole PC a few times. Tried it with 3 different PSUs, checked the wall socket with a tester. And it was simply the CPU cooler.

None of the temperature sensors shown extreme values (a possible reason is inaccurate temp sensors) and the overheating part can be something close the CPU on the motherboard without any temperature sensors. Most cheap PC cases have terrible airflow even with good fans so in case of strong components it’s better to leave the case open. Since I hate dusty/noisy open cases I bought a better one installed some good fans.

That stupid problem that causes hardware to overheat is often a sign of optimized code that can make use of various parts of the hardware (cpu, memory, gpu) in parallel without long/frequent interruptions. That of course consumes more power and generates more heat.

Today most CPUs are multi-core (my i5 8600k has 6 cores) and a game that can use only 1 or 2 cores continuously most of the time will of course generate much less CPU heat than another game that can scale to all cores. Most PC software (including games) can still use only a couple fixed number of cores.

If something overheats then it is never the fault fault of a game even if some other games don’t overheat the same piece of hardware. It’s the user’s responsibility to configure the hardware and the system in a way that makes it impossible for a running program (game or anything else) to crash the PC even if it makes use of all resources that have been made available to the app. (Those resources can be limited with over-/under-clock settings, video driver settings, in-game video settings, etc… unless you have a hardware or driver bug).

Pro/serious gaming hardware uses much more power, it’s much more difficult to cool, more prone to overheating and it’s usually more buggy because of using cutting edge hardware/driver while the mid/low-end hardware is usually another iteration over the previous well tested generations with some additional hardware/driver improvements that further reduces their power consumption and heat generation. But this doesn’t mean that people can drive them to their limits with the worst cooler closed into a bad PC case that has no airflow and acts as a torture chamber in terms of heat. People really like to skimp on things like cooler, PSU and PC case.

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