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I am having an issue with my wife's PC that I am baffled on and I figured I would post here to see if I can get some assistance.  Basically what is happening is she can be playing a game (usually Minecraft) and the thing will just shut off.  There is NO blue screen, it just shuts off. We've had this issue once before, and I replaced the power supply and that fixed the issue.  It is not a heat related issue, I just put in a Corsair H50 and it's running flawlessly.  Could just Minecraft cause a machine to shut a machine off like that?  Could Minecraft be taxing the GPU and shutting the machine off?  I am at a loss.

 

The strange thing is it can be running for several days without an issue and that it will start acting up again. Most recently, it ran for 3 days straight with no issues, and then yesterday it shut off probably 10 times.

 

Hardware is as follows:

 

EVGA P67SLi Motherboard

Intel 2500K CPU

8GB Corsair SDRAM DDR3

GTX 460GPU (can't remember the manufacturer right now)

Kingston 64GB SSD

750GB Western Digital HDD for storage

 

Any help anyone can provide would be most appreciated.

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How are you sure it's not temps? Run a temp tool whilst the game is running to make sure they are in range and rule our this option. Could be that the heatsink is not seated properly or the GPU is getting too hot.

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Do you have temp monitoring setup, it could be a heat issue on the CPU/Heatsink not seated properly? Another thing, anything showing in Eventviewer prior to the crash under system/application?

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First question on something like that would be, "what does the event log say?"

I don't know the exact requirements for Minecraft, but I would be amazed if it were able to cause a machine so much stress that it switches off.

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Has to be power or heat related

 

What are the temps, just because it has a good heatsink doesn't mean it's not malfunctioning or installed incorrectly, also see if you can get the temps for the video card 

 

Does it matter what she's doing when it turns off or does it only turn off playing games? Recent drivers installed for the video card?

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I don't know the exact requirements for Minecraft, but I would be amazed if it were able to cause a machine so much stress that it switches off.

 

It wouldn't surprise me actually. I think it's running on Java and uses a ton of CPU resources especially in large maps.

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It wouldn't surprise me actually. I think it's running on Java and uses a ton of CPU resources especially in large maps.

Huh. Really? I can't argue, the only time I played it was briefly on a phone and it didn't do anything for me. But I would find it interesting that it is so intensive as to shut a machine off. Then again, you do mention the size of maps and so I guess that could be a factor to consider.
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The main core of the game only runs on a single thread, but it can really stress it. Especially if you have a load of mods running with tons of (in game) processes happening at the same time. You're CPU can quickly begin to hate you. That being said I'm guessing this is just vanilla in which case I would be surprised as well. Larger maps tend to put more pressure on memory, it still only renders a few chunks at a time.

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There is NO blue screen, it just shuts off.

 Take a look at the event log and see if there are any error logs.

 

We've had this issue once before, and I replaced the power supply and that fixed the issue.

 Maybe it's a PSU issue again?

 

It is not a heat related issue, I just put in a Corsair H50 and it's running flawlessly.

 That corsair is cooling the CPU only. What about the GPU? Are you sure it's not overheating?

 

Hardware is as follows:

 

EVGA P67SLi Motherboard

Intel 2500K CPU

8GB Corsair SDRAM DDR3

GTX 460GPU (can't remember the manufacturer right now)

Kingston 64GB SSD

750GB Western Digital HDD for storage

What's your PSU? Is it a quality brand?

 

I'd suggest you run a few stress test programs, both CPU and GPU, like OCCT, etc. and monitor the temps. See if it'd shut off.

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I can't argue, the only time I played it was briefly on a phone and it didn't do anything for me.

I am sure it didn't do anything for you... How could anyone enjoy a non-casual game on a 5" screen? Maybe when the smartwatch version comes out that will change your mind.

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I am sure it didn't do anything for you... How could anyone enjoy a non-casual game on a 5" screen? Maybe when the smartwatch version comes out that will change your mind.

The size of the screen wasn't what caused me to walk away. I've seen friends play on large plasma screens and I still don't get the appeal. I like sandbox games, but the complete (I think?) lack of objectives just left me sat there thinking, "what do I do now?" once I had built a stronghold to protect myself in, built enough items to defend myself when exploring and the like.

I could continue on to the idea of grafting for weeks in order to construct something that looks great (well, as far as Minecraft graphics can allow) and then being sat there once again saying, "now what?" But this thread isn't primarily about the game, we're trying to sort computer out.

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The size of the screen wasn't what caused me to walk away. I've seen friends play on large plasma screens and I still don't get the appeal. I like sandbox games, but the complete (I think?) lack of objectives just left me sat there thinking, "what do I do now?" once I had built a stronghold to protect myself in, built enough items to defend myself when exploring and the like.

I could continue on to the idea of grafting for weeks in order to construct something that looks great (well, as far as Minecraft graphics can allow) and then being sat there once again saying, "now what?" But this thread isn't primarily about the game, we're trying to sort computer out.

I hear you but just saying the Pocket Edition of Minecraft is really meant for people who all ready enjoy the PC version. It's just a pet peeve of mine, people trying to do real gaming on a phone (or wanting to email on a smartwatch, etc.). Use the right device for the job!

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Just a side note...did you have a temperature monitor showing CPU, motherboard and drive temps, being displayed.....up to and prior to quick shut down......I had a problem once that crept up quick when system loaded....it was the heat sink compound which somehow lost it's ability to transfer heat efficiently...cleaned both surfaces and applied quality compound......it was temp monitoring which helped me....Cheers.... :)

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As already stated, pull the event log and see what the system says. Default allocation used by the mincraft.exe launcher isn't enough to be blaming it too much. The nice part about minecraft is that it does run on Java, so we can always blame the environment for any technical issues. I'm not too sure about the machine overheating on something so simple as minecraft, but it could still be that. The event log should tell us all we need to know. The only other thing popping off my head is Java is pre-allocating the size in RAM and you could have 1 bad stick in there that usually doesn't get accessed. If that is the case, memtest it and let us know the results.

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Hey, I have an intel compu stick and it crashes most times when I switch to another hdmi and its not in use for a couple days. Has anyone have this issue, apart from that it works great as a media center

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Check your GPU fan is spinning properly and the cooler isn't full of dirt.

 

Just had one of two GPU fans fail on the Mrs MSI GTX 650 OC with similar issues to yourself. Games (DA Inquisition) were OK so I didn't put a lot of effort into looking at the GFX card but video streaming / Youtube or flash related games were causing the same issue as you're describing.

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Yes, I've had temp monitoring utilities running.  I am running MSI Afterburner and the GPU temp is sitting around 65 C max.  For the CPU temp, I am running Intel XTU.  At idle, the chip is running at about 32 C and under load while playing it's getting somewhere in the low to mid 50's.  I originally thought it was just Minecraft, but we tried Diablo 3 and it did it there as well.  Some it appears I have some sort of hardware issue going on.  I've checked the Event Logs and the only thing it's really saying is that the system shutdown abnormally, there are no other error that I can see which would lead me to believe that the system is blue screening.  In face, I turned off the option to restart the PC if it does blue screen so I could see it, if it did happen.  And again, there is NO blue screen, the system is just shutting off.  I am guessing the GPU could be at fault here, but I can't be 100% certain. This was happening prior to installing the H50 as well.

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Check the RAM, Java is infamous for allocating what you give it and a bad stick could cause a failure in lue of a crash. And you could be right, it could be the GPU. Just run memtest

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