Force restart after a few minutes with any Steam game

[kyle.adams3]

I have a weird problem that started a few days ago. Every time I play any game from Steam it forces a system restart after a few minutes. At first it was not letting me even log back in to windows and would get stuck in a restart loop. I got around this first by reinstalling windows, then by deleting Steam, then I found that having Steam not set to launch on boot lets me at least get back into Windows. Still though I can't play any game without a forced restart.

On the other hand I can play games not from Steam. In fact they play fine. This is leading me to believe it is not a hardware issue.

I have an HX99G with AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, and 32gb RAM.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am not comfortable with taking this computer apart as it is not really made for that easily, and I don't have experience doing that.

[Schrute_Farms_B&B]

Well, I can assure you its everything but Steam causing your PC to restart and also to remain in a restart loop. (99,9% faulty hardware, 0,1% driver/software issues since youre using a clean OS)
Its an utter coincidence, that non-Steam games wont make your PC to restart on its own.

Which OS?
What GPU? Are you using your iGPU?
What about your PSU?
What about OC?
What about temps?
When you say "restart" do you mean, your OS literally shuts down your PC with a shutdown-message ?
If so, any BSOD, reliability or event-log? (If thats the case. upload the logfile so we can take a look into it)
If not, its a hardware related issue. (PSU, RAM, GPU, HardDrive, etc)
What about a stability test? FurMark, 3DMark, Cinebench, etc.

More infos, please.

edit:
You need to rule out components.

edit II :
Some CrystalDiskInfo values wont hurt either.

[kyle.adams3]

I'm on Windows 11, AMD 6600M, no idea about PSU or OC. I will run a test after work to check the temps.

The restart is that the screen flashes black, I get the white circle of dots thing, then the whole PC restarts and I get back to the Windows login screen after about 20-30 seconds. I have tried to check logs of the crash using WhoCrashed but it comes up with nothing.

"Its an utter coincidence, that non-Steam games wont make your PC to restart on its own."

This honestly feels hard to believe as I have tried now 5 or 6 non-Steam games with zero problems, and yet no single Steam game will work for more than 5 minutes without the crash described above. It doesn't matter if the games are graphically intense or not, as I have tried examples of both for both non-steam and steam games.

[Elucidator]

Test your memory with memtest86
I think it maybe an issue with memory. A specific fullness may trigger it basically.
memtest will detect it if that is the case.

Other than that, no clue to be honest. It could be a software conflict causing issues in the kernel but then you do get log entries in Event Viewer / Windows Logs and can clearly see what caused the crash issue.

It's a good idea to look at your event viewer / windows logs anyway (look for errors at the timestamp of the crash)

You can also look through Steam's crash logs, but those may not have generated.


edit:
Just a note, but if you do not have enough RAM, your PC will use pagefile
which is basically virtual RAM, fake ram;
instead of your system memory, it will use space on your SSD as RAM, and this means lots of writes.
It's possible your SSD is suffering if the game is ram intensive and you are short on RAM. In that case, your SSD could be broken, however...
normally you get a Blue Screen with the error saying it was a pagefile fault.
As the first reply said, it does not hurt to run crystaldiskinfo and check for the health of your SSD, but considering the nature of the sudden reboots, I suspect your real DIMM format hardware, your actual RAM.

If however you recently had a power surge breaking a mosphet, that I suppose too could be it, but normally, your PC would hang instead. Crashes are, kinda specific.

[[☥] - CJ -]

Drivers
RAM
Powersupply

3 of the most common causes for that result

As its a mobile CPU, i suppose powersupply doesnt count.

Could be RAM as one thing affects it but another doesnt, only Steam doing it would lean towards RAM as steam and whatever else could access the RAM differently which causes the fault.
-

A Start would be a clean uninstall/reinstall of the Graphics Driver using DDU in safe mode, using DDU turn off automatic driver installs so windows update doesnt automatically try to install an inferior driver before you can manually install one, and then installing the latest GPU Driver and see if it resolves the issue or not, after which you can focus on other causes.

[Graveccc]

Memtest testing should help you to eliminate ram. I would start with that.
I did have some issues with restart and can't repair windows loop. After running memtest I found out that my RAM was failing.
Testing RAM would be my advice.

[_I_]

disable windows auto reboot on bsod
often it will not show the bsod before rebooting

[emoticorpse]

Is 6600m a discrete card? This situation at the moment to me smells like Steam tripping on the gpu/igpu somehow.

If you have two display adapters try disabling the weaker one? Or set Steam to use the stronger one.

[[☥] - CJ -]

Should be a 680m which is integrated because of the CPU i would think

[_I_]

m = mobile
it uses the igpu along with the dedicated gpu
cant disable the igpu since thats the only thing attached to the display

[emoticorpse]

I suppose i would try manually setting Steam to use the 6600m if possible and see if it stops the crashes.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

You should avoid all-in-one mini PCs like a plague if you want something for gaming.

[kyle.adams3]

I tested the memory and it found no problems. I am pretty sure the GPU is discrete, and I will try to make sure it is not trying to use another graphics driver or something. If that doesn't do it I will just assume it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ PC.

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by kyle.adams3:

I tested the memory and it found no problems. I am pretty sure the GPU is discrete, and I will try to make sure it is not trying to use another graphics driver or something. If that doesn't do it I will just assume it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ PC.

Do you have two actual display ports on the back of that thing or only one place to connect the monitor?

Do you know what I mean by "setting Steam to use a selected display adapter"?. You go to Windows settings and assign certain applications to use certain adapters so like a person could set Steam to use their igpu on their cpu as opposed to a 4090 if they wanted. That's how it's supposed to work.

Steam is pretty buggy and doing this might make the difference between a functioning system and a non stable one.

Also, yeah having a funky hardware setup like yours doesn't help but there should still be a chance this helps. Might sadly be more of a Steam problem than your hardware configuration though.

[Folmos]

Yo have you found the solution? Mine does the same thing. After playing CS2 for a couple minutes, it restarted and mostly stuck on restart loop screen. It only restarts on steam games (espescially cs2) which is weird. Played Valorant for couple of hours non-stop and had no issue. Played other non steam games, had no issue too. Wtf is going on

[_I_]

Originally posted by Folmos El Pablo:

Yo have you found the solution? Mine does the same thing. After playing CS2 for a couple minutes, it restarted and mostly stuck on restart loop screen. It only restarts on steam games (espescially cs2) which is weird. Played Valorant for couple of hours non-stop and had no issue. Played other non steam games, had no issue too. Wtf is going on

make your own thread

post a cpuz validation link
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
cpuz -> validate button -> submit button
it will open a browser, copy the url (address) and paste it here

and psu brand/model/age

bsod/reboots is most commonly, psu, drivers or unstable oc