Dark souls 2 is causing my PC to randomly SHUT DOWN

[Rhoen]

I have a fairly powerful rig, temp never goes above 31c, dual 780TI....runs like a charm on max settings and then-boom. Entire pc shuts down.

[Pisolo]

No, it's not the PSU.

[Bruel]

Escrito originalmente por Kingseeker:

Its the psu. i had the same issue back then with random games, switched to a quality one and everything was fixed

No.

[Reign]

Happening to me. Hunter's right after the first bridge. Has shut down about four times when I cross the bridge. AMD card. No it's not my power supply, have never had this happen prior to this instance.

[EvilTaffyapple]

this happened to me last night for the first time - the hidden bonfire in Huntsman Copse, with the key.

Light the bonfire and my PC crashed to blue screen. my pc and parts arenot even 2 years old, and my PSU is 80+ certified

[FissJérale]

I am most probably late in this conversation but still... I have those random crash issues. At first is would happen always in the main city, turned down the graphics and I was good. Thought it was my CPU fan with broken pins so I changed it. Now i've set everything to max and something weird is happening. If i play crossfire off the random shut down happens very easily. If it's crossfire on.... it just happened for the time at level 100 of my character. I even tried the other video card alone.

Thing is.... DS 2 is not a very demanding game on PC, there is way more demanding game on the market right now.... why would it draw too much of my power supply... even with just one card rolling... with a new cpu fan... with a good power supply... I should have a lot of head room... and Windows says it's Kernel-Power error in the journal... anyway just wanted to share... after all my efforts i think it's more a video card problem or game problem or driver problem!

I'm not a pro in PC but still.... I know my PC handles an Xbox 360 with high resolution... without overtaxing whatever it is in my PC

[Foe]

It's your PC, something is broken, other software you installed or just Hardware.
Resolution: reinstall you pc and only install what you really need, don't install optimization programs or other crap and try it again. Check for firmware updates for you mainboard and check the UEFI settings. If you still encounter random shutdowns, something with your hardware is wrong/broken.

[Dark-Master.Barbzilla]

I'm going to second the PSU suggestion. I had a buddy that couldn't play his Darksiders 2 game on his powerful rig (and I lived too far away for a pro-bono call), and it was only Darksiders 2 that would shut his PC down. Almost 4 months later (still having the same issue), I go to his place the day this game releases on PC (Dark Souls 2 for anyone confused as to what game forum this is), we install it on his machine, and I go to boot into the game (mainly because he was in bed and I didn't want to wake him setting up my rig) on his rig. Then the entire computer crashes and begins an endless on/off loop until I cut the power to it.

Switched out the PSU after investigating the computer and surrounding area, I found his power strip was faulty and had a short, and this had slowly killed his PSU that was trying to regulate that extra power. So, if you have a friend with a working PSU to test with, I'd highly suggest it.

[fearnomoshpit]

Escrito originalmente por Dark-Master Barbzilla:

I'm going to second the PSU suggestion. I had a buddy that couldn't play his Darksiders 2 game on his powerful rig (and I lived too far away for a pro-bono call), and it was only Darksiders 2 that would shut his PC down. Almost 4 months later (still having the same issue), I go to his place the day this game releases on PC (Dark Souls 2 for anyone confused as to what game forum this is), we install it on his machine, and I go to boot into the game (mainly because he was in bed and I didn't want to wake him setting up my rig) on his rig. Then the entire computer crashes and begins an endless on/off loop until I cut the power to it.

Switched out the PSU after investigating the computer and surrounding area, I found his power strip was faulty and had a short, and this had slowly killed his PSU that was trying to regulate that extra power. So, if you have a friend with a working PSU to test with, I'd highly suggest it.

Tried switching out my surge protector/power strip after reading this and sure enough that's what was going on. Been playing for over two hours now with no crashes and before it would crash at least once every half hour or so, usually more frequently. Odd, though, that it ONLY affected Dark Souls and not a single one of the other games I play.

At any rate, thanks for that tidbit of info! Praise the sun!

[Dark-Master.Barbzilla]

Escrito originalmente por fearnomoshpit:

Escrito originalmente por Dark-Master Barbzilla:

I'm going to second the PSU suggestion. I had a buddy that couldn't play his Darksiders 2 game on his powerful rig (and I lived too far away for a pro-bono call), and it was only Darksiders 2 that would shut his PC down. Almost 4 months later (still having the same issue), I go to his place the day this game releases on PC (Dark Souls 2 for anyone confused as to what game forum this is), we install it on his machine, and I go to boot into the game (mainly because he was in bed and I didn't want to wake him setting up my rig) on his rig. Then the entire computer crashes and begins an endless on/off loop until I cut the power to it.

Switched out the PSU after investigating the computer and surrounding area, I found his power strip was faulty and had a short, and this had slowly killed his PSU that was trying to regulate that extra power. So, if you have a friend with a working PSU to test with, I'd highly suggest it.

Tried switching out my surge protector/power strip after reading this and sure enough that's what was going on. Been playing for over two hours now with no crashes and before it would crash at least once every half hour or so, usually more frequently. Odd, though, that it ONLY affected Dark Souls and not a single one of the other games I play.

At any rate, thanks for that tidbit of info! Praise the sun!

I'm glad we got to it before you accidentally fried your PSU. Typically by the time you notice the issue, its too late (so keep an eye on it).

As for why it only affects this game or that game, but not others. My best guess is, those games are poorly written for your particular hardware combination, so it draws more power to compensate as it runs through back up solutions (most game coding has a ton of boolian code to watch for errors due to hardware differences).

[OnionKnight]

So I've been experiencing this same event since I started playing. I have verified the temperatures for GPU and CPU. Crysis 3 on 3 monitors and/or my 4k TV rack the temps up way higher than what I'm currently getting on DS2. Furthermore, I can play that right now and it wont shutdown ever. Not even a crash either.

Also, just to verify the statement about the PSU, I measured the power consumption with a wattmeter and it doesn't exceed 300W on a 850W PSU. I can even benchmark with overclocks and it wont shutdown either.

Im using a 3570k @4.4GHz and dual sapphire 7970s at 1150/1575MHz. (also tried disabling crossfire)

Its not my hardware since I can do anything else and this wont happen. So it has to be something from their side that causes the hardware to malfunction and shutdown. Any fix so far?

[la_nague]

your temp sensor seems faulty, 24° on load is probably not right, especially air cooled.

[OnionKnight]

Just tried running 3DMark and 0 shutdowns either. All temperatures were within safe ranges too.

[WildCopperFetus]

This error is affecting my PC as well. My PSU well exceeds the minimum power rating for my motherboard, drives, GPU, CPU, memory, and case fans. It is air-cooled. Although no other game causes this trouble, there are times when hardware failure can result even if this minimum rating is exceeded. I wouldn't immediately point to faulty software, as the requirements of a large and graphically complex game such as Dark Souls II are very demanding. I will say that the original Dark Souls hasn't caused me any similar trouble so far. I have tested my PC with the newest 3DMark several times in a row and monitored temperature to CPU and GPU, everything is clean and running as it should be. Just patched everything, will try again. Can say I have been making PCs for 15 years or so and am pretty confident this is not a failed power supply. When the internal components of a PSU fail, it normally blows to an open circuit through some sort of fuse or relay, although relays may fuse under extreme load or heat. A surge protector will protect electrical equipment from damages caused by a surge in AC power line voltage, but will not protect from brownouts and should not cause power loss unless there is loss at the electrical outlet. This game is too good to miss out on, I would even consider buying another old PC just to play it, but that's going a little far. Either way, an answer would be nice, just to know someone is looking for answer would be comforting. I did spend 60 bucks after all, but this is just sorta how new software goes sometimes. Your shouldn't need to replace your power supply unless you have a very low-budget or custom PC with an insufficient power supply rating for all of the devices on your PC. You could download a demo of 3DMark or some other benchmark and run a continuous test. Windows will also log a power event each time the PC shuts down unexpectedly, so you can leave it on all day and check for power events. Be warned that even if your motherboard is advertised to prevent damage from this, it cannot prevent all damage resulting from power loss and the other components like the video card and CPU are more at risk. If you already run the PC all the time, you are at risk anyways. If nothing but this program shuts it down, all indicators point to software bug. This one is a weird one for sure.

edit: Oh yeah, in case anyone is wondering, you can monitor system log events through the event viewer in Windows Vista+ by accessing it through the control panel. It is available as a right-click option on the start button in Windows 8, which is just wonderful.

[Zvy]

This has actually happened to me as well. Only with DSII. It is really strange and few and far between but it has happened a few times.

[OnionKnight]

So I bring some news. I continued to test my computer, after finding FFXIV ARR restarted my PC as well. I played since 1.0 which was way more tasking on the system, so I found this to be curious. I did CPU, GPU tests using 3DMark and OCCT (did PSU mode test on OCCT); having the latter run twice for 1 hour and there was not any restarts. Also Ran Crysis 3 on maxed out settings (2x MSAA) and 0 restarts either. Which leads me to think why it only restarts from time to time in XIV, and almost instantly on DS2. So with a leap of faith, I bought a new PSU thinking my old PSU maybe dying. See, the previous PSU was a Corsair HX850 and was barely stressed above 350-400W on heavy gaming. I purchased 2 days ago a Corsair AX860 and ironically, all problems are fixed.

I'm currently enjoying playing DS2 on 1440p and will soon get a 4k Asus monitor to enjoy it at 60Hz. This is more confusing, since it doesn't restart on "real loads" but rather on lower power consuming applications, but it seems my HX was dying and those 2 games started to show symptoms. However they started when I played DS2 for the first time.

tl;dr new psu fixed all the problems, but still doesn't explain why people experience these restarts at all.