Hey all,

I recently upgraded my graphics card from an NVIDIA GTX 680 to an NVIDIA GTX 980. When I play GPU-intensive games, the system will reboot without any warning. I've disabled automatic restart for Windows, but it still reboots without warning. Additionally, I grabbed a dump analyzer and tried using that - reported no dumps. I even got two of my PSUs modular PCIe cables and tried swapping those in, to no avail.

Any idea what could be causing this? The only thing I see in the Windows event logs is a kernel warning about losing power ("The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."). I have a Corsair 850W HX850, so it shouldn't be power.
 
 
 

I agree look closer at your psu corsair is notorious for having products that never reach the end of there warranty before one has to do an RMA, I've had to do 5 this year all different corsair products. Too bad but very true.. 

I agree to test PSU first ... I had a HX1050 fail in less than a year in my Haswell system. The box would reboot when playing random games. certain games would run fine, others would cause the reboot. Thought is was my RAM since it was random. Picked up a PC power & cooling 750W and all is well.

Thanks for the replies, guys! Sadly, I don't have a spare PSU to confirm that that's the issue - any other ideas while I wait to RMA my power supply? There appear to be some updates for my motherboard, but it doesn't look like any of them impact or address this. Regardless, I'll update on the off chance that it fixes something.

Going through this same problem right now with a 970. Have a new PSU on order and hoping it solves my problem as well.

It depended on the game. For instance, at the time I was playing Sniper Elite 3. The game would run fine with normal anti-aliasing settings, but when I enabled supersampling, it would crash every time. Other games, such as Left 4 Dead 2 would run for about 45 minutes then crash (black screen, 100% fans, then reboot). I ended up returning the cards for EVGA ones and the issues stopped. 

Yup.. what most have said. This kind of 'random' restarts and shutdowns are most definitely PSU failures.
 
The PSU is in its last throes - there is a mint 1200W PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool PSU I saw for sale in the For Sale section of this forum that would seem ideal...

PSU issue almost 100% certain

Thanks guys! I RMAed my PSU and the card works now. Looks like you nailed it :)

I have the same issue. My pc reboot on any game I play. After one and half years, I finally find why. I am using the wrong power cord "the thin one", not the one that come with the PSU. The one that come with it, is a fat one. Thin one I am using only produce half of power, that why it keep rebooting. I already RMA my PSU and shipped out before I find out this. I bet not all people change their power cord on each build. I have been using that cord for 3 build already, never have guess it was a (Deleted for Foul Language) power cord.

arestavo
Power cords can be bad, even the thick ones. I had a thick one that wouldn't allow my PC to boot at all.
 
However, a thinner cord won't be an issue unless you are drawing serious amps. How do I know? A 1350W PSU that I have works just fine with one. Granted I'm not pulling more than 800W with it, so your total computer draw might be above 1000W and causing the restarts.
 
But one question: how do you know it was the thinner power cord not supplying enough power (and not just it being a bad cord) if you somehow found out after you sent the PSU to RMA?

You are right. My cable is defected. Not fat or thin cable problem. I tested with both cables, it's work fine now