PowerSpec G436 Crashing Regularly

EdHunter

My PowerSpec G436 PC has started crashing regularly when gaming. The pc either completely shuts off or monitor shuts off and is not responsive while pc remains on, especially when VR gaming. Events viewer shows multiple "Event 41--Kernel Power" critical failures. This machine is only a few months old, purchased from Microcenter in Westbury, NY. I have not manipulated any power settings or have overclocked. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Ian

EdHunter said:

My PowerSpec G436 PC has started crashing regularly when gaming. The pc either completely shuts off or monitor shuts off and is not responsive while pc remains on, especially when VR gaming. Events viewer shows multiple "Event 41--Kernel Power" critical failures. This machine is only a few months old, purchased from Microcenter in Westbury, NY. I have not manipulated any power settings or have overclocked. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Greetings. It is possible your video card / display drivers are crashing. I would suggest doing a clean install of your video card drivers to see if that helps. We have a step by step guide on this process found at https://community.microcenter.com/kb/articles/133-how-to-clean-install-video-card-drivers-in-windows-10

ninja502

you can check for current nvidia drivers at   https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/

EdHunter

ninja502 said:

you can check for current nvidia drivers at   https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/

Thank you they are updated, I cross referenced between Windows and Nvidia site to make sure I have the most recent.

EdHunter

Ian said:

EdHunter said:

My PowerSpec G436 PC has started crashing regularly when gaming. The pc either completely shuts off or monitor shuts off and is not responsive while pc remains on, especially when VR gaming. Events viewer shows multiple "Event 41--Kernel Power" critical failures. This machine is only a few months old, purchased from Microcenter in Westbury, NY. I have not manipulated any power settings or have overclocked. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Greetings. It is possible your video card / display drivers are crashing. I would suggest doing a clean install of your video card drivers to see if that helps. We have a step by step guide on this process found at https://community.microcenter.com/kb/articles/133-how-to-clean-install-video-card-drivers-in-windows-10

Since I posted this I first tried to run benchmarking and stress testing and it has crashed every time. Would you advise trying the clean install if I am still under warranty. I mean it's a brand new machine, I was considering just dropping it off and letting the local store deal with it since I've only had it two months. I don't want to void the warranty either.

EdHunter

So I went ahead following the direction at that link and performed a clean install of geforce drivers. I proceeded to try benchmarking and stress test once again and the pc crashed. This stinks! Not even 2 months old....

EdHunter

Interesting results now. I opened up case and dusted components. I also changed connections to monitor from display port to hdmi. I’m now able to run benchmarking and stress tests without any crashes! I did not think dust would be an issue as I’ve only had the machine for a very short time. But...trial and error it was either that or the monitor connection. Any thoughts? 

DMA

Maybe a silly question but is it possible you were using the display port from the MOBO initially and not the graphics card?

EdHunter

DMA said:

Maybe a silly question but is it possible you were using the display port from the MOBO initially and not the graphics card?

Ha! No I was not. The pc has been performing optimally only until recently with these crashes. I’ve been getting one of two lately: pc completely shuts off or monitor shut off and is non responsive while pc remains on. My benchmarking tests are excellent now and no crashes. And I’ve ran numerous stress tests without having a crash. This would be incredible if it was just a dust issue. I’m usually not that lucky. 🤣

EdHunter

I’m going to swap out the hdmi with the display port cable now to see if the crashes come back.

EdHunter

So this appears to have been dust as the stress tests using display port cable did not cause any crashes. 

JS_MC

That's impressive. Glad to hear that your dusting was able to rectify the issue for you!

PowerSpec_MichaelB

EdHunter said:

Interesting results now. I opened up case and dusted components. I also changed connections to monitor from display port to hdmi. I’m now able to run benchmarking and stress tests without any crashes! I did not think dust would be an issue as I’ve only had the machine for a very short time. But...trial and error it was either that or the monitor connection. Any thoughts? 

People often neglect dust as a real culprit for no-POST issues or general instability, but depending on the particulates, it can be pretty brutal. I do a lot of dremeling in my work/gaming environment and my system sits in an open frame chassis, so it's not uncommon for metal particulates to find itself near components. Had a gnarly short on an old GTX 1080 Ti once as a result. Even for systems with a chassis, it's easy to screw in a top radiator and shave off a bit of aluminum on to the top of a GPU's PCB in between the backplate, causing weird issues like this.

Glad you were able to figure it out in the end while also bringing awareness to the issue in case others stumble across this thread. If you run into any other issues, don't hesitate to reach out!

EdHunter

LandShark said:

That's impressive. Glad to hear that your dusting was able to rectify the issue for you!

Yes, of all things. Glad I didn’t lug it in to microcenter for them to tell me it was a little dust. Lesson learned!