is my pc overheating or power supply failing?

[Dutch]

ever since yesterday my pc restarts without warning while I was playing a game so I thought maybe my pc was overheating but now it happened while I was just watching youtube and the cpu was at okay levels should I replace my power supply?

[WhispersOfTheWind]

Might be one of those two things. I had a PSU die on me before, but hey you could ask on the Hardware Forum for assistance, maybi?

[Electric Cupcake]

Does the event viewer log give any clues?

[Amuro0079]

If it's the PSU, the event viewer would just say something like a kernel-power error which just means the system rebooted without properly shut down.

It does sound like the PSU is dying. If you have a PSU tester, check the voltages of 3.3v, 5v and 12v rail, and see if they are off by more than 5%. When my old PSU died, the computer restarted a few times, and then it wouldn't turn on any more.

[Plaid]

could be a bad stick of RAM.

[Biff]

First find out the temp of the cpu. There are free programs for that; Speccy, for example. 32c is optimal. If above that replacing the power supply might fix both issues. A new cpu is more complicated - but that may not be the problem.

[idester]

if you have spare parts (spare graphics card, ram sticks, power supply, cpu, ect.) please use those and do troubleshooting, an entire pc could overheat by a bad stick of RAM, (like what Plaid said) bad ram slot, or you have a old and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ power supply

[Xautos]

Originally posted by Plaid:

could be a bad stick of RAM.

bad memory sticks wouldn't shut the pc down, the memory either won't recognise any more like it wasn't plugged in (completely dead), give a bsod error code on loading or the bios will alert you when it runs the mem test on start up (assuming you have the speaker plugged into the mobo).

if you only had one, it would probably just bsod and restart and then the bios would alert you and that would be it.

overheating graphics cards can do a hard shut down of a computer.

[Plaid]

Originally posted by Xautos:

Originally posted by Plaid:

could be a bad stick of RAM.

bad memory sticks wouldn't shut the pc down, the memory either won't recognise any more like it wasn't plugged in (completely dead), give a bsod error code on loading or the bios will alert you when it runs the mem test on start up (assuming you have the speaker plugged into the mobo).

if you only had one, it would probably just bsod and restart and then the bios would alert you and that would be it.

overheating graphics cards can do a hard shut down of a computer.

Bad ram has caused me blue screens, unless blue screens were turned off and the PC would restart instead. No bios alert, windows would start fine. It depends on the extent of the damage to the RAM.
It can progress from causing problems under load, to simple things like trying to browse the web.

Keep in mind I'm not insisting it IS the RAM, just throwing it out there as something to check.

[Dutch]

I mean, it hasnt happened before I don'tt believe but I do know it happened 3 times while playing Apex legends (I only have 8 gigs of ram) so it was really high also Idk why if I have like 3 apps open half my ram is used anyways it happened once just on chrome and that wasn't pushing t high ram or cpu load so does this rule out the Power supply (I got it in 2016)