Game shutting down my PC

[Sturmer]

The game randomly shuts down my PC - not in the nice way, but very abruptly, as if the mobo was overloaded or had a powersurge or something. It's been happening with the original release and latest beta as well. It can happen during saving game, undocking, walking around on station, being in battle, standing up from the pilot seat, etc. Upon my PC crashing/turning off it then restarts by itself. Not really enjoying this.

[KextV8]

The game randomly shuts down my PC - not in the nice way, but very abruptly, as if the mobo was overloaded or had a powersurge or something. It's been happening with the original release and latest beta as well. It can happen during saving game, undocking, walking around on station, being in battle, standing up from the pilot seat, etc. Upon my PC crashing/turning off it then restarts by itself. Not really enjoying this.

List your computer hardware and whether it's overclocked. There are any number of things it could be, but a lot of the time it's best to start by eliminating the possibility of hardware failure. Computer crashes like this are often caused by power supply going bad, or component overheating etc.

[ApoxNM]

The game randomly shuts down my PC - not in the nice way, but very abruptly, as if the mobo was overloaded or had a powersurge or something. It's been happening with the original release and latest beta as well. It can happen during saving game, undocking, walking around on station, being in battle, standing up from the pilot seat, etc. Upon my PC crashing/turning off it then restarts by itself. Not really enjoying this.

Yep, always list your specs when writing about such issues. (or dxdiag)

[walkedav]

Going to guess, Video card voltage issue...

[loubert]

Power or heat issue, or both. A system will shutdown if it's overheating, but if it's turning back on right away, then it's probably a power issue (heat doesn't dissipate right away, so if it were a heat issue, I'd expect it to stay off for a few). Could be that your PSU (Power Supply Unit) is insufficient or dying, or perhaps you have a short somewhere...

Could be any number of things, but it's likely something physical. Software problems do not usually result in hard restarts; if software (and even some hardware) causes your system to restart unexpectedly, you'll almost always get a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death).

[ApoxNM]

Going to guess, Video card voltage issue...

Or CPU / GPU overheating, can have the same effect.

You should monitore your CPU temp and use programs for GPU monitoring as well.

[DancingPengiun]

Sounds like a heat/voltage issue...

Need specs else we can't really help.

[Requiemfang]

Yup def sounds like heat issue, do you have a desktop PC or a laptop? Laptops are prone to overheating due to not being able to vent air as good as desktops are. Also yeah post your specs.

[canshow]

The problem lies with either 1) Your PSU (power supply unit) 2) Your graphics card, or 3) Your CPU

Download HWmonitor - it shows you the temperature of your computer parts. If your temperatures are below 80C while playing, the issue likely lies with your PSU. It is probably damaged. I actually just had this exact same problem - My PC would randomly shut down and restart mid-game, and it got progressively worse as it started to happen when playing other games, and eventually when the PC was sitting idle. I replaced my PSU on friday and the shut downs have stopped.

If you feel like replacing your PSU is a pre-mature move, I would suggest cleaning your case and the PSU (the fan and whatever else you can) with compressed air. It is possible that it has accumulated so much dust that it is simply critically overheating.

[Sturmer]

Thank you for your replies.

My PC is more than powerful enough and stable enough to run this game, I run DCS World, Elite, Fallout 4, Arma 3, GTA V and so on on highest settings; the GFX card is also brand new GTX 1070. PSU is 750W. I would like to emphasise that I don't have this problem with shutting down with any other game or application and I do video and photo editing as well. Only X4 gives me problems. I do however remember a long time ago Starcraft 2 had major issues with overheating cards when it launched and it was one of the first things they had to fix, so I'm 100% positive it's the problem with the game itself.

[Socratatus]

Thank you for your replies.

My PC is more than powerful enough and stable enough to run this game, I run DCS World, Elite, Fallout 4, Arma 3, GTA V and so on on highest settings; the GFX card is also brand new GTX 1070. PSU is 750W. I would like to emphasise that I don't have this problem with shutting down with any other game or application and I do video and photo editing as well. Only X4 gives me problems. I do however remember a long time ago Starcraft 2 had major issues with overheating cards when it launched and it was one of the first things they had to fix, so I'm 100% positive it's the problem with the game itself.

What you say isn`t making much sense. Why would X4 choose your apparently perfect rig to shut down and nobody else has this issue?

Are you sure it can`t be anything to do with your pc?

I bought a brand new graphics card in January my pc started playing up. then my new graphics card died. I RMA`d it and they exchanged for a new one asap. Perhaps you`re new card is on the blink? New stuff can be faulty.

[Dreez]

Sounds to me like a clear case of bad PSU, you might wanna check how many watts is delivers.

[CBJ]

I'm afraid what happens with other games is not terribly relevant. Your PC may well be powerful, and it may be stable running other applications, but every game stresses a PC differently and uses different features of things like drivers, and can expose problems with the underlying system that other games or applications do not. There is nothing the game can do directly to cause your PC to shut down; that can only happen if there is a serious fault with driver-level code or a hardware issue, as various people have correctly advised you.

[Arghan]

Thank you for your replies.

My PC is more than powerful enough and stable enough to run this game, I run DCS World, Elite, Fallout 4, Arma 3, GTA V and so on on highest settings; the GFX card is also brand new GTX 1070. PSU is 750W. I would like to emphasise that I don't have this problem with shutting down with any other game or application and I do video and photo editing as well. Only X4 gives me problems. I do however remember a long time ago Starcraft 2 had major issues with overheating cards when it launched and it was one of the first things they had to fix, so I'm 100% positive it's the problem with the game itself.

None of them are especially CPU heavy, while X4 is making heavy use of it. Enough so it imho a lot of times it is CPU bound, not GPU bound. My rig has easier time running any of them cause I have relatively weaker CPU (FX 8350) vs my GTX 1080.
First - check windows log - a lot of times you will find some leads there to what exactly is causing it.
Second - check the temperatures and loads.
Third - check for dust... Dust in fans can be a nasty surprise - which happened to me on few occasions.

[canshow]

Thank you for your replies.

My PC is more than powerful enough and stable enough to run this game, I run DCS World, Elite, Fallout 4, Arma 3, GTA V and so on on highest settings; the GFX card is also brand new GTX 1070. PSU is 750W. I would like to emphasise that I don't have this problem with shutting down with any other game or application and I do video and photo editing as well. Only X4 gives me problems. I do however remember a long time ago Starcraft 2 had major issues with overheating cards when it launched and it was one of the first things they had to fix, so I'm 100% positive it's the problem with the game itself.

I mean the next thing you should do is just monitor your card temperature while you're playing. It should become fairly obvious a few minutes in-game whether or not the card is overheating. If it is, I would override the fan control on the GPU to 100% and see where that gets you, because the fanspeed curves can be inadequate at times. Otherwise, and I will say it again, the issue likely lies with your PSU and you should see to getting it cleaned out, and if that doesn't work, then get it replaced. I just had this same exact issue (the shut downs literally started by playing X4!!) and it got resolved by replacing the PSU.

You may have a point that the software is not optimized, it could have caused your system to draw max voltage where the other games may not have. Either way, if your system shuts down because the PSU fails to deliver on max load, then... well I won't say it again.

[KextV8]

I don't know if this is true on modern cards, but a lot of the time the ram on GPUs isn't visibly monitored and can overheat. Alternatively, your actual RAM could be going bad. Might wanna run a diagnostic on that.

[MAup]

This might need to go to the technical forum, but if you want any help, your help would be much appreciated.
Please post your DxDiag log (search dxdiag)
Also please specify how old the rig is (individual parts if it has been upgraded with time) age sadly does matter sometimes.
Please, also make your computer restart with the game running, and show the "reliability history". (Open start menue and search for reliability)
Here you will see alot of stuff to why the computer is behaving "wierd", so printscreen this information and we can walk from there.

peace

[Helmut_AUT]

HWMonitor to check temps, and if the game crashes on software level and takes the OS down you should have either a minidump file somewhere (google it) or stuff in your windows event log.

[Scoob]

Usually, if you just get a CTD, then you can assume perhaps the game is at fault. A PC hard crashing like that though has to either be a hardware issue of some kind or some wonky driver. Sure, the game might be pushing the PC to crash, but the PC should be able to take it.

Also worth checking BIOS settings as many PC's are told to shut down instantly, no warning, no messages, if certain conditions are met. These might be temperature based ones or something else. My motherboard has these options, but I've asked it just to warn me if CPU temperatures ever go above 80c - they never have - I could have asked it to insta-shut-down instead.

X4 is harder on the CPU than most other games - certainly the ones I have - it also stresses one or two threads higher than others, which can introduce its own set of problems. For example, during my (many) overclocking experiments, I've had success getting all Core stable OC's and can stress all Cores to 100% for ages without a problem. Change that test to stress just one or two Cores though and there were issues...until I refined things.

Scoob.

[MAup]

Reliability History will tell you if its a hardware failure or a software failure. Easiest thing to check both, without downloading anything or booting up your bios