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AcesOfSpade

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AcesOfSpade

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November 1st, 2019 14:00

T3610 - Seemingly Random Crashes & During SupportAssist GPU Stress Test

Hi everyone,

I've previously been a fan of troubleshooting on Reddit, but after dealing with my PC randomly crashing for almost 10 months at this point, I am hoping that coming here to the Dell forums is "calling in the big guns."

To start off I have checked and verified that all Drivers, BIOS, and Firmware are up to date.

My issue is that after putting together my PC from mostly used parts (only my SSD and GPU power cable are new) I am continuously struck by an issue of my PC screen going dark on random occasions with my only remedy being to hold the power button and hard-shutdown (I never get a blue screen or error message.)

After the shutdown, my logs report nothing unusual other than "hard shutdown at this time by holding the power button." This issue occurs during very specific stress tests listed below, while gaming, and even during very idle operations like web browsing.

Why I am here on the Dell forums: Oddly enough my PC will not crash even during the most strenuous stress tests such as the one I did today running Prime95 + MSI Kombustor Furmark/Unigen Heaven/UnigenValley for almost a combined total of 2 hours - with no errors. The odd thing is, however, I can replicate the crashes 100% of the time by running the Dell SupportAssist GPU Stress Test.

Specs:

Pre-built Dell T3610 .

  • Intel® Xeon® E5-1650 v2 Processor (Six Core HT, 3.5 GHz Turbo, 12 MB)

  • 4x4GB DDR3 1600 MHz and 1866 MHz RDIMM ECC/Non-ECC

  • EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

  • 685W Stock Power supply

Symptoms:

I frequently have the exact same issue happen where seems like the GPU crashes mid game or sometimes even idle

  • Monitors connected to Display Port and HDMI both lose signal

  • Mouse and Keyboard are still powered however they lose connection (e.g. my Corsair Keyboard defaults to the onboard color configurations and the Caps Lock no longer registers with the light)

  • Sound output still works (e.g. Spotify will continue playing music, will continue onto the next song)

  • Video output only resumes after holding the power button and restarting the PC

Stress Tests:

While I have had this issue rarely while idle or low stress tasks like browsing the web, stress testing the PC has some interesting results

Specific Stress Tests
  • Prime95 + Unigen Valley - Never Crashed on Extreme - Temps Maxed out near 72 degrees C

  • Prime95 + Unigen Heaven - Never Crashed on Extreme - Temps Maxed out near 72 degrees C

  • Prime95 + MSI Kombustor Furmark - Temps Maxed out near 72 degrees C
  • OCCT GPU and CPU Stress Test - Never Crashed

  • User BenchMark - Never Crashed

Gaming
  • League of Legends - Crashes very frequently (even sometimes on the launcher and getting ready to enter a game) - Temps have been very low during some of these issues

How to replicate:

One way I seem to be able to replicate the issue with almost 100% certainty is running the Dell "SupportAssist" GPU Stress Test. It seems that this specific stress test hits the GPU exactly where it weak and causes the crash.

Conclusion:

Based on these tests I have a hard time determining if the culprit could be my GPU, Power Supply, or neither. It is very confusing to me that I can run concurrent GPU and CPU stress tests with no issue yet crash idle and almost every time I try to play some video games.

I have also looked into the potential of the power supply being too small, however based on the below PSU calculator, I believe my stock 685W that came with the T3610 should be sufficient.

PSU Wattage Calculator

OuterVision PSU Calculator part list

Type Item

Motherboard Desktop
CPU 1 x Intel Xeon E5-1650 v2 3500 MHz Ivy Bridge-EP
CPU Speed 3500MHz
CPU Vcore 1.2V
Memory 4 x 4GB DDR3 Module
Video Card Set 1 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
Core Clock 1506MHz
Memory Clock 2002MHz
Storage 1 x SSD
Storage 1 x SATA 7.2K RPM
Other Device 0 x USB 3.0 Device
Keyboard 1 x Gaming Keyboard
Mouse 1 x Gaming Mouse
Fan 1 x 80mm
Computer Utilization 16 hours per day
Gaming/Video Editing/3D Rendering Time 4 hours per day
Monitor 2 x LCD 27 inches
Load Wattage 411W
Recommended Wattage 461W
Amperage +3.3V: 10.2A, +5V: 11.3A, +12V: 26.7A
Recommended UPS Rating 1000VA
Generated by OuterVision PSU Calculator 2019-10-11 02:29:50
  • GenghisQ

    6 Posts

    3413

    1

    Posted November 2nd, 2019 05:00

    You say that the GPU Temp maxed out at 72° and that should be OK, but it might be card specific. I had a Quadro 4000 on a Lenovo workstation that would cause instant shut down when it hit about 90°c, even for an instant. The code is built in to immediately power off the computer to prevent damage to components. Run HW Monitor (https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html) during your day and it'll note the peak temps. My problem: DUST. My machine was  in an open rack but near the floor and I'd neglected to clean it out. It was massively overheating, but a good clean and all was well. However some cards are much worse than others and to be safe I swapped the Quadro 4000 for a K4000 which uses less power and stays much cooler. 

    If it's not heat (and the inbuilt "protective shutdown") it could still be that one spot of GPU memory that's duff or any number of things. PSU's are often the culprit for bad behaviour - they don't last forever and fluctuating power causes all sorts of symptoms, like disks dying (so you think it's just disk failures) and so on. Again, HW Monitor will show you voltages....good luck, there's nothing worse than trying to narrow down nasty problems like this. It's worth collecting a box full of spares so you can try replacing one bit at a time to narrow things down. Also, get a replacement PSU to keep in storage - they won't be available forever for some of these custom-design machine

  • AcesOfSpade

    1 Rookie

    3 Posts

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    0

    Posted November 2nd, 2019 14:00

    Thanks GenghisQ, thats a really good point about having a backup power supply so I'm ordering one now and will see if it helps with the issue. I have unfortunately had the problem since building the PC when it was immaculately clean so I don't think any new dust is the problem, but I will also do a deep clean when I try out the new power supply.
  • GenghisQ

    6 Posts

    3387

    0

    Posted November 2nd, 2019 23:00

    I'm only talking about dust and muck building up on the fans and vents to restrict airflow, so if your fans are all working and there's no obvious clogging you should be OK (again, monitor the GPU temp to see how it's going). I'd be borrowing another graphics board to try out if possible - although blown graphics boards are not a good thing it's much better to be able to pinpoint the problem to a single replaceable card. I did have a Quadro go belly-up after only a year or two (it was replace under warranty) so a faulty card can happen, and is one of the least nasty outcomes. A bad PSU always leaves you wondering what else might have been damaged...

  • Krokodilus

    1 Message

    3125

    0

    Posted March 3rd, 2020 18:00

    Is it turned out yet what was the problem? I have got the same issue... Thanks.

  • Zzeino

    2 Posts

    2986

    0

    Posted April 9th, 2020 19:00

    I have the exact same problem with almost the same components. It's honestly driving me mad.

    These are my specs:
    CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1650 v2 @3.50GHz
    GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founder's Edition 
    RAM: 64Gbs DDR3
    OS: Win 10 x64
    Storage: (1x) SSD Sata III 2.5" (1x) HDD
    PSU: 685W Stock

    This is what I've tried so far:
    I replaced the CMOS Battery.
    Tried running the PC with another GPU (GTX 1080)
    Installed Win 10 on both SSD and HDD and ran them separately
    Tried 2 different Monitors (I thought it was a monitor problem)

    Nothing helps and like you said @AcesOfSpade it keeps freezing randomly with the only remedy is having to perform a hard shutdown. Have you solved the issue perhaps?

  • AcesOfSpade

    1 Rookie

    3 Posts

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    Posted April 9th, 2020 21:00

    @Krokodilus @Zzeino  - The issue ended up being a bad video card, I probably should have gone with a more refutable seller from ebay. After I replaced my card with an RX580 8GB I had no issues.

  • Zzeino

    2 Posts

    2984

    0

    Posted April 9th, 2020 21:00

    I replaced my GTX 1070 8gb with my friend's GTX 1080 8gb (that had no problems for him) and the same issue still persisted.

    I can't think of anything else to do but replace the whole motherboard, which is gonna force me to replace the RAM (since they're DDR3) and the CPU. 

  • Augmentaio

    1 Message

    2825

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    Posted May 8th, 2020 02:00

    I had my motherboard changed by Dell Support but still problem persists. Also tried diferent graphics card. Also no heat anomalies. Other ideas?

  • 2817

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    Posted May 8th, 2020 03:00

    @AcesOfSpade  Sorry to bother, but I see you've put in an RX580, I'm planning to do the same, but the power requirements of that card is stressing me out. (Sapphire Nitro+ RX580 8GB ~ 235Watts).

    May I ask how you set it up power connection wise? (my card needs both 8 pin and 6 pin)

    How much power does your card draw?

     

    (I made a post about it here if you want more info) 

  • liciuna

    1 Message

    1737

    0

    Posted August 13th, 2020 01:00

    same problem with 3 different pc