Question New PC restarts the moment I launch a game

Stg-Flame

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Mar 10, 2007
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I'm brand new to Windows 11 and I can't find any error codes or crash logs anywhere and the Q-Code on the motherboard only says CPU post-memory initialization in the booklet. The lights on my GPU and RAM have turned off completely (they were staying lit prior to the first crash) but they all light up when I first turn on the PC then randomly turn off shortly after it boots. I ran a few different games yesterday and everything worked perfectly fine but now it just crashes.

Where do I start for troubleshooting this? The booklet doesn't give much information regarding the Q-Code and Googling the description for the Q-Code leads to the basic "remove hardware until it works and there's your problem". I was hoping I could narrow it down before tearing it apart again.

Edit: Just reseated the RAM into slots 2/4 and the second stick's LEDs went out almost immediately, but so did the lights on my GPU and the fan on the GPU stops spinning as well. The lights on my AIO worked for about thirty minutes and then they turned off and they only flash when I start the PC but they won't turn on either. The Q-Code is still the same (33/34) so that's not telling me much. Is it possible both the GPU and one stick of RAM is bad?

Edit 2: Just quickly reseated the RAM, tried each stick individually and everything seemed to work. Put them both back in and everything is working again. I was able to launch games with no problems but I can't figure out why it was crashing. I have my monitor and PC on the same power strip but I would think that would trip a breaker if it was drawing too much power and I know it wasn't overheating since I was monitoring the temps on the last crash and nothing was even close to the high temp/yellow zone.

Edit 3: Put the RAM back in the initial slots to see if I could narrow it down, but everything is working fine again.
 
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Stg-Flame

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Sounds like either the board or the PSU. You should be able to figure out the code in the manual though.
The inconsistency is what has me stumped. Even when my PC is working fine it still has the same Q-Code and the manual just says for this code "CPU post-memory initialization" and the online searches I came up with simply said to keep removing hardware until it works. Basic deduction - which I was planning on trying anyways, but as I said in one of my edits, after moving the RAM around a bit, it started working fine. I put the RAM back in the original slots just to test if it was the board and there's no issue at all. It's a bit difficult for me to troubleshoot which component is causing the issue when the issue is so sporadic and I can't replicate the initial crash.
 
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Do a complete memtest. If that fails, try relaxing the timings. Or choose a lower XMP setting. If you prefer to use the fastest XMP setting, make sure the IMC is receiving enough voltage and not too much voltage (this seems to be a common problem from what I hear).

Which PSU is it? That 3090 Ti on launching games could be pulling a lot of power (transient spike).
 

Stg-Flame

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Or choose a lower XMP setting. If you prefer to use the fastest XMP setting, make sure the IMC is receiving enough voltage and not too much voltage (this seems to be a common problem from what I hear).
I honestly have no idea what XMP is other than people have mentioned in many places that XMP is the cause of a lot of problems. I had planned on researching it but real life things kinda got in the way. I can change all of that through the BIOS so I'll look into it today.

Which PSU is it? That 3090 Ti on launching games could be pulling a lot of power (transient spike).
EVGA SuperNova 1000w Platinum I had asked in a few places about the power draw of the 3090ti and I was assured by many people who are much smarter than I am that 1,000w would be plenty despite the Nvidia website saying the Founder's Edition needs 850w for the overall system but only draws 450w. I mistook that as on a full load the GPU would draw 850w which doesn't leave enough for the rest. Considering how the entire PC just shut down, my first suspicion was the PSU like Tech Junky mentioned. It was also suggested that I could lower the voltage on my CPU if the transient spikes become too common.
 
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It was also suggested that I could lower the voltage on my CPU if the transient spikes become too common.
Instead of doing that, you can just undervolt your GPU so it loses just 5% of its performance but total power consumption could be reduced by as much as 100W. Why pay for electricity for that last 5% of performance?
 
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I honestly have no idea what XMP is other than people have mentioned in many places that XMP is the cause of a lot of problems.
It's Intel's Extreme Memory Profile. Usually XMP memory kits come with two profiles, one for maximum bandwidth and one for lowest latency and you can choose between the two in BIOS. Unfortunately, some motherboard BIOS will pump too much voltage into the IMC with XMP enabled.

For reference, check out this screenshot from some user's 13900K system:


If any of the voltages in your system are higher than that, especially the below two (VDD and VCCSA), you may want to lower them manually in BIOS:

1668523204478.png

But do note that I don't have practical experience with Alder Lake/Raptor Lake memory tuning and there are more knowledgeable people here who can better comment on XMP.

My only brush was with a i5-12400 and for that, I chose the CL15 DDR4-3000 XMP profile and it worked flawlessly with that.
 
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Tech Junky

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I'm running 3200 on the laptop and 3600 on the server w/o tweaking anything.

I'm not running a GPU on the server though since it's a headless box that runs 24/7 and not something used for anything too eventful that would need one. The laptop has a 3060 though and no issues to speak of.

The odd thing is with more details like the 1000W PSU from EVGA means you should have enough supply to cover the max load of the complete system unless something is afoot with another link in the chain.

XMP just ups the speed of the RAM if possible in a given system. Not usually an issue unless you're tinkering with advanced settings / options. One key thing is to make sure the V's match what's being asked of the RAM by the system as there's been some random changes lately that I noticed when looking at the specs of the MOBO vs RAM when shopping around.

Another thing that's a bit counter intuitive is which slots the primary ram would be fit into. Some boards want it in 1/3 and others 2/4. Instinctively though it would make more sense to some putting it in 1/2 then 3/4.

The fact that this is happening though when launching a game that stresses the system further than idle points to the GPU more so. One thing that comes to mind is moving the GPU to another x16 slot to rule out the MOBO being the issue. While you're moving it around double check both ends of the cables you have connected just to make sure they're seated completely. I've run into instances when messing around with things in the past where I thought I had everything reseated and missed something. On the server I didn't fully clamp down the cooler and caused elevated temps but not to the extreme where it sent out an alert or anything and on a laptop didn't fully seat a tiny 4-pin connector for a fan CPU/GPU which caused a temp issue almost immediately. It's easy to gloss over something when troubleshooting or doing maintenance.

Another thought might be the RAM wasn't fully seated when moving things around but, that shouldn't cause a system crash when launching a game but would slow things down a bit from the missing 16GB.
 

Stg-Flame

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I actually have one of those packed away somewhere. I'll see if I can dig it out or since it's so cheap I'll likely get that ordered while I look. The one I have is pretty outdated so it might be good to have a new one.

Some boards want it in 1/3 and others 2/4. Instinctively though it would make more sense to some putting it in 1/2 then 3/4.
The crashing was happening in 1/3 and that's where I almost always put them initially. With them in 2/4 I've had no issues after the initial crashes but that doesn't really tell me much especially since I put them back in 1/3 and was able to load the game that crashed initially.

One thing that comes to mind is moving the GPU to another x16 slot to rule out the MOBO being the issue.
I hadn't thought of moving the GPU since the 3090ti is so large, but I'll give that a try.
 

Stg-Flame

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Update: I haven't had a crash since I made this topic, but the LEDs and internal lights either work perfectly, or they just don't turn on at all and I can't figure out that issue either. I've rechecked all the cables to make sure they're all plugged in completely and I've reseated my GPU to another PCI-E slot and nothing seems to work. I'm not a huge fan of having my PC being a lightshow but it would be nice to have my hardware work properly and it would be even better to be able to figure this out in case it is indicative of a larger problem. I should note that the LEDs on my case fans work just fine and haven't turned off or flickered even once, but my AIO, motherboard, RAM, and GPU lights all go out together. I still have the Q-Code display working, but all the LEDs are off. I think the biggest one that stumps me is the GPU lights because there is no dedicated cable for the lights on that since it's just the Nvidia Founder's Edition and only the letters light up for that one.
 

VirtualLarry

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Sounds like your +5V line is going out or shorting.

This can be due to:
1) mobo issues
2) HDMI shorting issues, or power back-feed from display device
3) ESPECIALLY with back-feed with non-Vesa compliant DisplayPort cables
4) PSU issues
5) USB port or external (often, powered by wall-wart) USB hub back-feed issues.
 
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Stg-Flame

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Ok, so ASUS overnighted me a brand new motherboard and while the LEDs are working now, the entire PC crashed again the moment I loaded a game. I put Armoury Crate onto my second monitor so I could watch the temps and loads as I loaded the same game again and this time it didn't crash. I still can't narrow this issue down and with a brand new motherboard installed, there has to be something else or I'm just missing something. The entire time I played Dying Light 2, none of my temps even came close to warm so I know it's not overheating or seeing any random temperature spikes.
 

Stg-Flame

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Without ordering another GPU, I won't be able to do much testing on that front but it's possible I can just get a hold of Nvidia and see if they will ship out a replacement. The drive the game is running from is an old 256GB SSD that I harvested from my old PC and now that I think about it, the drive is over ten years old and since I have two 2TB NVMe drives and a spare 512GB SSD, I really don't need this 256 in my system for any reason.
 

In2Photos

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Just this last week I was struggling with a game crashing on my old as hell PC (it worked fine for the last few weeks). I pretty much wrote it off to the fact that my PC was just too old to keep playing the game. Doing some research I saw that lots of other people were having trouble with the game as well and they had much newer hardware than I did. I tried all sorts of things, removing an overclock, disabling overlays, turning on/off various in game settings, playing in windowed mode instead of full screen, etc. Nothing worked. By chance I decided to select the Low quality preset instead of the custom preset I had set up myself. I've played the game twice since I made that change without a single crash. So maybe your issue isn't hardware related. Try changing some game settings and see if that makes a difference.
 
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Tech Junky

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Try changing some game settings and see if that makes a difference.
I agree with this methodology but, the electrical issue with the lighting components wouldn't have much to do with the settings until now.

If I'm reading between the lines here. The PC works fine until engaging the GPU and then it bottoms out and reboots or is it the game crashes and send you back to the desktop @Stg-Flame ? I know the OP was more of an overall system issue but, has it changed since swapping the MOBO?

LEDs are working now, the entire PC crashed again

Post crash I would be digging into the event log and seeing what's showing up in there prior to the reboot. I had a pesky issue with spontaneous reboots for a month or so on a laptop and in the end it turned out to be a driver issue with Intel. I went through different power bricks and such before booting to Linux for a couple of days and it being completely stable which ruled out the whole physical portion of the issue.
 
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Stg-Flame

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Just this last week I was struggling with a game crashing on my old as hell PC (it worked fine for the last few weeks). I pretty much wrote it off to the fact that my PC was just too old to keep playing the game. Doing some research I saw that lots of other people were having trouble with the game as well and they had much newer hardware than I did. I tried all sorts of things, removing an overclock, disabling overlays, turning on/off various in game settings, playing in windowed mode instead of full screen, etc. Nothing worked. By chance I decided to select the Low quality preset instead of the custom preset I had set up myself. I've played the game twice since I made that change without a single crash. So maybe your issue isn't hardware related. Try changing some game settings and see if that makes a difference.
I initially thought this as well, but the game first crashed with a heavily modded Fallout 4 save and immediately after the first two crashes, I loaded Dying Light 2 and it crashed just the same. One of the most recent crashes happened with Risk of Rain 2 and both F4 and RoR2 I was able to run maxed out with no issues on my old PC so it's not the in-game settings or some new RTX setting that's causing the crashes. At least, I don't think it's an in-game setting but at the moment I have no clue what's causing it so I'll give it a try.

If I'm reading between the lines here. The PC works fine until engaging the GPU and then it bottoms out and reboots or is it the game crashes and send you back to the desktop @Stg-Flame ? I know the OP was more of an overall system issue but, has it changed since swapping the MOBO?
Since swapping the motherboard, the only issue I'm currently facing is the random PC reboots. When the system crashes, it's as if I just flipped the power switch on the back. Everything shuts down immediately and just restarts, but I'm not familiar with Windows 11 and I attributed the first few crashes to Win11 updates just casually restarting my PC. I didn't think this was an issue because I didn't get the startup prompt telling me it was unexpected and wanting to know if I want to boot into Safe Mode like Windows 7 used to ask. To be honest, I still don't know if the PC is crashing or if Windows is just restarting the PC at really coincidental times. That being said...

Post crash I would be digging into the event log
I completely forgot about the event log and after looking into it, I'm showing a lot of Error and Warnings all with DistributedCOM 10010 and 10016 right before the PC restarted.
The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{2593F8B9-4EAF-457C-B68A-50F6B8EA6B54}
and APPID
{15C20B67-12E7-4BB6-92BB-7AFF07997402}
to the user redacted SID (S-1-5-21-3008285538-2859975476-2359297919-1001) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Unavailable SID (Unavailable). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

Edit: Just crashed three more times in a row. Twice while trying to start Risk of Rain 2 and once for Binding of Isaac Rebirth. The only common theme here is they are all games on Steam and as it was mentioned earlier, Steam is on a decade-old SSD that I just plugged into my new PC. The only game I don't have installed on a SSD hasn't crashed once, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I can try to reinstall Steam on my new NVMe drive if it's remotely possible that the age or simply Steam being installed on a different drive than the OS could be causing this issue.
The name "STG :0" could not be registered on the interface with IP address 192.168.0.8. The computer with the IP address 192.168.0.4 did not allow the name to be claimed by this computer.
There's always two of these and the only difference is the ":0" changes to a ":20". No idea if any of this makes sense to someone because it sure as hell doesn't make any sense to me.

I should also note that I restarted my PC after the two crashes and when it crashed again with Binding of Isaac, I shut it down completely and immediately tried to launch Risk of Rain 2 again and it's working perfectly. Armoury Crate says my GPU usage is at 100% and the crashes are 9/10 the moment the game tries to launch. The only one time it crashed after the game was launched was the moment the loading screen finished and the game tried to load up.
 
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Tech Junky

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The dcom error just seems to be the PC naming conflicts with your other PC being named the same in system properties.

Assuming your SSD is external and there might be an io deficiency causing the crash. Tty a different USB port and cable. Or put the SSD internal and see if it goes away.

The other com error seems like maybe there's a registry error causing a conflict. Maybe a borked install of steam?
 

Stg-Flame

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The SSD is internal. I'm going to try reinstalling Steam on a different drive and disconnecting the SSD to see if that has any effect at all.
 

Tech Junky

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The SSD is internal. I'm going to try reinstalling Steam on a different drive and disconnecting the SSD to see if that has any effect at all.
Interesting that the SSD is internal and throwing this sort of error.

Is there a particular reason to use Steam vs just launching the game on its own? I haven't used Steam and the only curiosity for me would be using it in Linux. Even then it doesn't really do what I want it to do and that's make it compatible and run. Seems more like a way to curate your games and more "portable" or store the licensing for easier reinstall if needed.
 

In2Photos

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Interesting that the SSD is internal and throwing this sort of error.

Is there a particular reason to use Steam vs just launching the game on its own? I haven't used Steam and the only curiosity for me would be using it in Linux. Even then it doesn't really do what I want it to do and that's make it compatible and run. Seems more like a way to curate your games and more "portable" or store the licensing for easier reinstall if needed.
It's similar to using Plex to play a movie. Steam just provides a library of your games so they are all available in one place. It also makes it easier to download and install them as you change systems. They're all available from the same source so you don't have to bounce around between game makers.