'Computer Turns Off Randomly' Issue
The single most frustrating issue with a computer is random rebooting and random power-off events. They can seem to come completely out of the blue, they are rarely accompanied by meaningful crash messages or post-reboot logs and info dumps that can give more details about the error causing the crash. Those factors make random crashes that lead to a full system shut down without a blue screen of death and error messages a real chore to deal with.
The reasons why a computer might turn off completely, seemingly at random, are as almost as many as the grains of sand in your backyard. However, there are a few major ones that are the culprit in the vast majority of those situations. We will try to examine them in this article.
-
Table of Contents
Check power cord, outlet and PC power supply unit
First things first, the most obvious places you should check are the places that supply electrical power to your system. Loose power plugs and faulty or loose power strip outlets can cause cuts in uninterrupted power and cause your system to shut down seemingly at random.
Simply replacing your PC's power cable and your power strip, if the PC is plugged into one, should be enough to eliminate this as a possible origin for the issue.
-
Check your component temperatures
Overheating components can be another major cause for sudden system shutdowns. Whether it is your GPU or CPU, a chip that heats up to and slightly above the hard limit set by its manufacturer, your system is very likely to simply shut down immediately to prevent permanent damage.
There are a number of ways to monitor the temperatures of your GPU and CPU. Those range from software applications integrated in your GPU's driver to free and open source applications you can install safely, that offer core temperature monitoring. Those are particularly useful if the crashes seem to happen under heavier system load, such as playing a game, when your components are put under more stress and may heat up much more.
Faulty fans are among the most common cause for overheating, but thankfully, replacing your fan with a new one is both cheap and easy, even if you need to get it done by a technician.
-
Update essential system drivers
Perhaps the most common culprit for full system shutdowns are conflicting GPU drivers. Downloading and installing the latest driver package from the website of your GPU's manufacturer will often take care of what seems like random system shutdowns.
Even though a lot of the time GPU-related crashes result in a blue screen of death and you can see the faulty file or module listed, there are many cases where GPU driver issues cause full system shutdowns.
