Computer Restarting with WoW on Ultra

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1

Okay here is a mystery that I couldn’t figure out after a week of troubleshooting so here goes.

The PC Specs are the following:

  • Gigabyte B450M DS3H Motherboard
  • Intel Core i7 7700 CPU
  • Corsair Vengeance 16gb Memory
  • EVGA Nvidia Geforce 960 GTX Video Card
  • Corsair CX750 PSU
  • SanDisk SSD 128GB
  • Samsung 1TB Hard Drive

A while back my computer started rebooting at random in World of Warcraft, the problem seems to happen in the most GPU intensive areas like Zuldazar or when I crank the graphics all the way to Ultra, but some other times it just happens at random and even when the game is just opening. I know random restarts are hard to pinpoint but bear with me.

First order of business I replaced the PSU with another one from a friend, oddly enough it made the problem worse, instead of rebooting only within World of Warcraft, the computer started rebooting at random within Windows and even at startup sometimes. So the conclusion was that the old Corsair CX750 PSU was actually holding the computer together somehow (the PSU we did the test was an EVGA 450W) it hinted at a power related issue but I still couldn’t be sure.

Next I did all the usual troubleshooting stuff: updated the video card drivers, tried one memory at a time, replaced the SSD with another drive (a regular mechanical one this time), tried running WoW from within another drive, unplugged the old cd drives that still were attached to the machine and even replaced my CPU water cooler with the stock fan, but the results was always the same, the game was rebooting the computer at random. And it only happened within WoW.

Now here comes the part that mystifies me, everything seems to point at the GPU at this point, I even tested WoW using the stock onboard Intel Graphics, which worked okay, further confirming the GPU to be at fault, however, just to make sure I ran the FurMark benchmark tool on the GPU bringing it to a toasty 85°C for five minutes and the GPU handled it perfectly! And even weirder the crash sometimes happens just as I am opening the game, when the GPU is not even under load.

So at this point I gave up and came here hoping anyone could shed a light in the matter, I still hope it might be a software issue, considering the weirdness of the situation. I would like to know another opinion before blowing money on a new Graphics Card.

2

I would test with a different power supply. A 450 supply may not produce enough wattage for the GPU and CPU plus the other items on board

3

Hi Ebheron

Is Windows Power Options set to High Performance in the Control Panel > Power Options (if you don’t see that setting click on show additional plans.

Open the Nvidia Control panel. Then open Manage 3D settings - midway down the list is Power Management Mode set to Prefer Maximum Performance.

4

So the PSU might still be at fault here… will look into another one that is over 500w thanks

Just tried that, still same result…

5

It does look like a PSU issue. If it isn’t you will have a PSU for a future build.

6

Before spending on a new PSU you could try a Windows app like TechPowerUp GPU-Z to get an idea of what the GPU is drawing.

7

Allright, tried taking logs this time, tried both FurMark and WoW, here are the results:

Furmark brought the GPu to a toasty 72°C and, this time around, actually rebooted the computer after 3 minutes running or so, the final log reading on GPU-Z was as it follows:

  • GPU Clock [MHz] - 1366.9
  • Memory Clock [MHz] - 1752.8
  • GPU Temperature [°C] - 72.0
  • Fan Speed [%] - 27
  • Memory Used [MB] - 466
  • GPU Load [%] - 100
  • Memory Controller Load [%] - 100
  • Bus Interface Load [%] - 0
  • Power Consumption [W] - 112.9
  • Power Consumption [% TDP] - 70.6
  • PerfCap Reason [] - 4
  • VDDC [V] - 1.1750
  • CPU Temperature [°C] - 44.0
  • System Memory Used [MB] - 3080

All things considered the power draw seem normal, topping at 112.9W and the card TDP is 120W.

Now what happened when I tried opening WoW the computer rebooted just after I hit the play button on the bnet app, indicating that even starting the game caused a crash, this is the last log before the computer crashed while opening WoW:

  • GPU Clock [MHz] - 1277.9
  • Memory Clock [MHz] - 1752.8
  • GPU Temperature [°C] - 58.0
  • Fan Speed [%] - 0
  • Memory Used [MB] - 719
  • GPU Load [%] - 9
  • Memory Controller Load [%] - 3
  • Bus Interface Load [%] - 1
  • Power Consumption [W] - 31.2
  • Power Consumption [% TDP] - 19.5
  • PerfCap Reason [] - 16
  • VDDC [V] - 1.0810
  • CPU Temperature [°C] - 40.0
  • System Memory Used [MB] - 3602

What called my attention here was the memory used reading compared to the FurMark reading, just opening the game made it go up pretty fast, could this indicate a VRAM issue?

Also the PerfCap Reason reading using FurMark indicated VRel = Reliability. Indicating performance is limited by voltage reliability. and the WoW reading was Util = Utilization. Indicating performance is limited by GPU utilization.

This last ones I am kinda lost to what they could mean…

8

The game can use a lot of Vram. At 1080P and dx 12 the game can use 3+ gigs of Vram.

Should mean at current voltage that is the highest clock possible.

Basically means that the Preformance is limited by the fact wow is more CPU dependent then GPU

9

Oh now that you mentioned the 1080P I just remembered an important detail, the game was running at 2560 x 1600 resolution, so I unplugged the big monitor and left only the smaller 1080P one on, this time I managed to log in the game but the computer rebooted again after a few seconds within Zuldazar, that happened both in the 10 Ultra settings and with the graphics set at 5. Maybe it’s time to give the video card a funeral…

10

I recently ran into this problem. A whole month of troubleshooting, wow being the only problem (at first).

I ended up building a whole new computer, as the problems mirrored driver issues, but slowly and steadily started to creep into other applications.

I bet it’s hardware. Mobo, processor, ram… In my experience, seems to always be hardware despite the numbers saying the contrary with terrible diagnostics. Hopefully you have amazon for easy returns, otherwise can get pricey.

EDIT: Oh yes, and gpu. It might very well be the gpu.

11

Oookay almost two months later and the problem was solved yesterday, just gonna give you the epilogue.

Northenlite was right when he said:

The EVGA 450W I tested was ALSO BUSTED, we only started suspecting that when we ripped the GPU entirely and the computer started rebooting the onboard Intel graphics as well (almost two months later).

So yeah… the PSU was the culprit all along, we were just unlucky enough to have a faulty PSU and then test it out with another broken component…

So whoever might have this issue in the future and find this thread in desperation I warn thee Power Supplies are things of the devil