Power surge on game load, crashing PC

[Drewfus]

since the last update, any time I load the game immediately after the first menu appears, my PC will shutoff due to a power surge. has happened 4 times.

[Nikolaj]

The space engineers software is incapable of causing a power surge in your computer.

But for the sake of trouble shooting, do you get a black screen hard crash or do you get a blue screen soft crash?

If you get a black screen hard crash, it's almost certainly an overheating issue. Check your CPU temps and if they're high, check your cooler, it's possibly broken or needs a good dusting off.

If you're getting a blue screen, it could be both hardware and software related. Write down the error code and post it here. If your computer reboots before you can write it down, get WhoCrashed, from here: http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed

It's a little program that can read the crash dumps and get the error code for troubleshooting.


Regards,
Nikolaj

[Drewfus]

its a black screen hard crash. The power surge error messge is coming during POST. Haven't been having any CPU temp issues, and not having any issues loading more demanding games. Like I said, loaded perfectly fine and ran great for me prior to last update, haven't been able to play since. weird

[Nikolaj]

Very few games are more demanding than Space Engineers.. It's not terribly demanding from a graphics perspective, but CPU wise it's an absolute pig.. Being a multithreaded, 64-bit process, unlike 98% of other games, it can really mess with your resources..

They did screw with the .NET coding with the last update, so it's quite likely something changed. I have noticed an increase in resource usage after updating, not crippling, but a noticable increase.

[Drewfus]

Anyone have any advice? My PC specs are below. Again, never had any performance issues with the game until the last update and now can't even get it started.

CPU: i5-3570K @ 3401 Mhz
RAM: 16 GB
Video: Radeon HD 7800 / 2GB RAM

I've ensured every single driver I can think of is updated. Every diagnostic run shows no issues.

[Iridium Black]

@pillowtop that is an alright computer, should run Space Engineers completely fine, if you cant then check the rendering quality in the options, i have a similar PC (might be a bit better, no offence) but its on the same lines but even people I know with top end gaming PC is getting performance issues because the game needs more but keen have kept the limiters to the same size so the game engine isnt drawing enough resources

[Coxzee]

You have a better rig than i and i have no overheat issues, you could try re-installing the game after making a back up of your game saves.

[Finaldeath]

Software can't cause your pc to chew up more power. Your power supply is most likely taking a dump.

[Drewfus]

Originally posted by MinionJoe:

What's your power supply rated at?

SE certainly makes my system run hotter than usual (around 130F). Higher temps mean greater resistance which means greater drain on the power supply.

Rosewill Extreem 750w. It's less than a year old.

Again, I ran this game for months with absolutely not the slightest issue. It wasn't until that update around June 7th that this problem started. Literally worked great just prior to update, then the crash / power issue immediately after the update.

I've stress tested my system a dozen different ways and can't recreate it. It only happens when loading Space Engineers. Actually, I can't get past the main screen. Sometimes it will sit there for a few seconds without crashing, but the minute I click ANYTHING, system crash / power surge warning. Even just clicking the "next" arrow on the announcements does it.

[Drewfus]

Originally posted by Nikolaj:

The space engineers software is incapable of causing a power surge in your computer.

But for the sake of trouble shooting, do you get a black screen hard crash or do you get a blue screen soft crash?

If you get a black screen hard crash, it's almost certainly an overheating issue. Check your CPU temps and if they're high, check your cooler, it's possibly broken or needs a good dusting off.

If you're getting a blue screen, it could be both hardware and software related. Write down the error code and post it here. If your computer reboots before you can write it down, get WhoCrashed, from here: http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed

It's a little program that can read the crash dumps and get the error code for troubleshooting.


Regards,
Nikolaj

Nothing is being written to the dump file for the Space Engineers crashes. Not going bluescreen, straight black screen.

Really getting frustrated. System is running cool, and the BIOS message is referencing power / voltage surge, not temp.

[Ekuah]

@pillowtop
Your problem sounds like a PSU issue to me.
Maybe you should make a burn test with your gig. Use Prime95 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime95) and furmark for it. (Furmark should only used briefly, because the GPUs tend to overheat)
This should generate a power dissipation near the possible peak power. If you get a black screen crash, then your PSU is not up to the task.
Personally I don't use Rosewil, but what I have read about them is, that they produce quite a "mixed" quality. So maybe you have a lemon.

[Tal Maru]

Get a bigger powersupply
With as much ram as you have and that video card you are stressing your PSU.
What is probably happening is your gpu/cpu/ram are all drawing on the PSU at the same time and it's overloading.

I would go for a 1Kw psu

[tweeve]

750W psu should be fine. RAM does not use that much power. Have you tried just reinstalling the game? The game doesnt that that long to download so its an easy reinstall. You can just backup your saves to be on the safe side.

If you think its hardware releated, I would try and stress test the system outside the game. Do heavy CPU burn in tests and maybe throw in a video stress test at the same time to draw more power. If you want a good CPU burn in test that uses real world data instead. Grab a copy of handbreak and re-encode a video, preferably a DVD or some hour+ long video. That is very heavy on CPU useage.

[Tal Maru]

Originally posted by pillowtop:

System is running cool, and the BIOS message is referencing power / voltage surge, not temp.

You are overloading your PSU probably with a peak load hence why I said get a bigger PSU or one that has a higher RMS.

Your card calls for a minimum of a 500W PSU
Throw a CPU / HDD / RAM ontop of that and you are pushing the limits of what your PSU is capable of and when it all draws at once it creates a peak overload and your PSU shuts down to avoid damage hence the bios message.

[STORM]

Are you running it on battery only?

[Drewfus]

Originally posted by tweeve:

750W psu should be fine. RAM does not use that much power. Have you tried just reinstalling the game? The game doesnt that that long to download so its an easy reinstall. You can just backup your saves to be on the safe side.

If you think its hardware releated, I would try and stress test the system outside the game. Do heavy CPU burn in tests and maybe throw in a video stress test at the same time to draw more power. If you want a good CPU burn in test that uses real world data instead. Grab a copy of handbreak and re-encode a video, preferably a DVD or some hour+ long video. That is very heavy on CPU useage.

I've reinstalled. In fact, what brought me back to this issue was I recently replaced my HD with an SSD, and reinstalled Space Engineers just to see what happened.