New prebuilt Ryzen system shutting down randomly

[Karpl]

I have a new Ryzen system from Velocity Micro I'm having problems with. Had it about two weeks but haven't installed anything on it yet in case I have to rma it. Here's everything that happened so far:

1. Computer shut down on its own. I wasn't using it, computer was idle, no programs open. I called tech support and they told me trick of unplugging power and hitting the on button 10 times. That got it to start back up. Admitedly, I did have it plugged into a new UPS, which was plugged into a surge strip. So I chalked that up to that being the problem. Now the UPS is plugged directly into the wall and the power cable leading into pc reads 120v using a multimeter.

2. Computer was off two days. Wouldn't turn on. Had to use the same trick above to get it back up again.

3. Computer was off. Mobo lights were on, which indicated that there was power and it would have turned on. Turned off the power switch in back of pc, hooked a few things up (I think network and usb mouse), turned power switch back on, and now mobo lights were off and of course it wouldn't start up. Again, unplugged power, hit on button 10 times, plugged back power and computer would boot.

4. Yesterday, same as 1. Computer was idle, no programs open (using my old pc nearby, on different ups and outlet). This is going to sound really weird, but it happened. I turned away from the computers to sneeze. Looked back up and this new system was shutting down. WTH! I wasn't close enough to the pc or its keyboard or mouse to have hit anything. I guess it was just a really strange coincidence? Anyway, once it shut down, like #3 above, mobo lights were on, so it would have turned on. But to test it, I turned off the power switch in back, turned back on - and at that point, mobo lights were off. I had to again use the 'hit on button 10 times' trick to get it back up again.

So I opened a ticket with support. They had me install WhoCrashed to see if there were any crash dumps caused by drivers. That turned up nothing.

At this point, I think I just want to rma the machine. But I don't know if I have enough evidence - or if it even should be rma'd. Has anybody else been through this? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! Sorry about the long post. PC info below:

Motherboard - Asus® B350M-A AMD® based chipset, mATX Motherboard
Processor - AMD® Ryzen™ 5 1500X Processor, 4-core / 8-thread @ 3.5GHz (3.7GHz Turbo), 16MB L3 Cache
Cooling - AMD® Certified Wraith High Performance Heatsink
Power Supply - 600 Watt EVGA® Power Supply, 80Plus Bronze Certified, > 80% efficiency
DDR4 Memory - 16GB Crucial® Ballistix™ DDR4-2400MHz (2 x 8GB), CAS 16 latency, low voltage
Video Card - 2GB EVGA® NVIDIA® GeForce GT 1030
Hard Drive 1 - 525GB Crucial® MX300 Solid State Drive
Hard Drive 2 - 1TB 7200rpm SATA 600 with 64MB Cache
Optical Drive 1 - 16x Blu-ray Burner SATA
Microsoft® Windows® 10 Pro

 

[Ketchup]

Power issue. They need to take it back.

 

[Karpl]

Thank Ketchup. Just curious. Was there any part of that that made you lean that way? I'm not doubting you, I just want as much ammo as I can get for when I talk to them again. I get the feeling they will balk at the idea, although they have been helpful so far.

What I think I need to do is figure out a way to reproduce the problem so I have a smoking gun to present to them. Just letting it run for a couple days didn't do it for me. It ran fine.

 

[EXCellR8]

I almost feel like perhaps they didn't install the CPU cooler correctly, and it's killing power to protect itself from overheating damage. It's very common for the computer to not be able to turn back on right away after performing this kind of self-protection (because the CPU needs to cool down).

When you can get it to power on, do you hear the CPU fan spinning?

 

[Ketchup]

Power issue. They need to take it back.

This:
2. Computer was off two days. Wouldn't turn on. Had to use the same trick above to get it back up again.

And really having to do the "trick" the first time would have made me start questioning this machine.

 

[Karpl]

I almost feel like perhaps they didn't install the CPU cooler correctly, and it's killing power to protect itself from overheating damage. It's very common for the computer to not be able to turn back on right away after performing this kind of self-protection (because the CPU needs to cool down).
When you can get it to power on, do you hear the CPU fan spinning?

Thanks EXCellR8. That wasn't a problem, but it did get me to examine things again more closely. I think the problem is the cheap power cable it came with. I was able to get the power inside to come and go just by jiggling it a certain way where it connects to the pc. After shining a flashlight into the female end of the cable, you can see that there's barely anything copper-wise to grab onto. It kind of hangs precariously, almost like the original hdmi cables. So I found an old cable with more copper inside to grab onto. With this one, I can't get it to budge or the power to go off. So hopefully this was the problem.

This:
2. Computer was off two days. Wouldn't turn on. Had to use the same trick above to get it back up again.
And really having to do the "trick" the first time would have made me start questioning this machine.

Yeah that one does make me think I might not be out of the woods yet. I was told that the trick works by clearing built up static. I don't know how that works, where exactly the static builds up, how it gets there. But I'm hoping it was the loose cable that caused it. Thanks for the help!