Computer reboots when playing SIms 4. [ Edited ]

[dlinacre]

Computer reboots when playing SIms 4.

Hi,

Recently my fairly beefy computer has started randomly restarting when playing the Sims 4. Not sure it's relevant but it consistently does it when I visit Batuu and once when visiting a reasonably populous bar in "regular" world.

I built the computer myself about 6 months ago, scavanging some parts from an older build.

Motherboard: X570 Aorus Pro

CPU: Ryzen 5600X

RAM: 32GB 3200

GPU Nvidia 1070 (From previous build)

PSU: 600w (From previous build)

An online calculator seems to think the PSU is powerful enough - and I was quite generous with all the peripherals etc.

Looking online at some people having similar issue over the years, many have said it might be a faulty power supply, but I've looked at the logs and can't see anything terribly obvious (though I'm not really sure what I'm looking for)

Logs are from HWInfo64. For some reason it says I can't upload .csv so I changed it to .txt. It'll need swapping back before they're human-readable :-p

Anyone have any ideas that would be great!

Thanks

[puzzlezaddict]

@dlinacre  I wouldn't want to manually read an hwinfo log either way, but saving yours as a .csv allowed my log reader to recognize it, so that worked out fine.

Did your computer in fact restart while you were creating this log?  I don't see any obvious issues, but that could be because it didn't restart or because the log cut off early; it ran for 9 minutes and change before ending.  This is important because an abnormally truncated log can itself be a symptom.

What exactly is the make and model of the PSU?  The quality can vary by a significant margin from one brand to another, even among units with the same specs.  Do you have the computer plugged directly into the wall or into a power strip or surge protector, and have you tried plugging it in elsewhere?  A faulty socket could be the cause, as could bad wiring overall.

Finally, please open the case and look for bulging capacitors on the motherboard.  While you're poking around, please confirm that your RAM modules are in the correct slots.  Hwinfo reports them in slots 2 and 3, which could be a reporting error or just an oddity in how the slots are numbered, but it's worth checking anyway.

[civvercivver]

2 seconds ago

Something similar has been happening with me.

I have a similarly high powered computer, upgraded in mid-April due to a motherboard crash:

ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero Z490 motherboard

Intel Core i7 10700K

64 gigs RAM

Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 SSD

Corsair AX Series AX850 80 Plus Titanium PSU

...and an ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti I recovered from the motherboard crash, 'cuz I'm cheap.

The UPS I use consistently reports power usage of around 186W normally and 211W when playing; it reported 324W during a ROG CPU-Z stress test. That sounds really low to me, but that's what it says.

Because I was happy with the game as it stood, I had not updated since then.

I'll be playing the game, which may have been running anywhere between 6 and 48 hours (estimated), when the game will freeze for a few seconds, after which the computer reboots.

This is annoying, not only because of lost time in game, but because I lose unsaved progress on anything else I happened to be working on at the time.

This only happens during gameplay, the computer doesn't reboot on its own when the game is not running, or is running in the background. I suspected it was because I had turned off the population limits (I now have around 300 "protected" sims in my main game), and there was some kind of stack overrun, but I really have no idea.

Anyway, that's why I decided to update, to see if that corrected the issue.

So last night shortly after updating I was playing a brand new game, no mods, nothing fancy, a grand total of one protected sim.

It rebooted on me in two hours. This morning it rebooted on me in less than ninety minutes.  The sims was alone in her apartment in the Spice Market neighborhood.

Meh.

In other news, I re-added all the CAS CC I had (all the old stuff, no updates), and tried the most recent save to watch the ensuing chaos.

There was no chaos. I could not find a single bald, naked, or question marked sim. So that's good.

[civvercivver]

Something similar has been happening with me.

I have a similarly high powered computer, upgraded in mid-April due to a motherboard crash:

ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero Z490 motherboard

Intel Core i7 10700K

64 gigs RAM

Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 SSD

Corsair AX Series AX850 80 Plus Titanium PSU

...and an ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti I recovered from the motherboard crash, 'cuz I'm cheap.

The UPS I use consistently reports power usage of around 186W normally and 211W when playing; it reported 324W during a ROG CPU-Z stress test. That sounds really low to me, but that's what it says.

Because I was happy with the game as it stood, I had not updated since then.

I'll be playing the game, which may have been running anywhere between 6 and 48 hours (estimated), when the game will freeze for a few seconds, after which the computer reboots.

This is annoying, not only because of lost time in game, but because I lose unsaved progress on anything else I happened to be working on at the time.

This only happens during gameplay, the computer doesn't reboot on its own when the game is not running, or is running in the background. I suspected it was because I had turned off the population limits (I now have around 300 "protected" sims in my main game), and there was some kind of stack overrun, but I really have no idea.

Anyway, that's why I decided to update, to see if that corrected the issue.

So last night shortly after updating I was playing a brand new game, no mods, nothing fancy, a grand total of one protected sim.

It rebooted on me in two hours. This morning it rebooted on me in less than ninety minutes.  The sims was alone in her apartment in the Spice Market neighborhood.

Meh.

In other news, I re-added all the CAS CC I had (all the old stuff, no updates), and tried the most recent save to watch the ensuing chaos.

There was no chaos. I could not find a single bald, naked, or question marked sim. So that's good.

[puzzlezaddict]

@civvercivver  Have you tried using a different surge protector or power strip, and plugging it into a different outlet?

[civvercivver]

No, but I'm really not sure how that would help.  I'm on an Uninterruptible Power Supply  that I purchased new when I upgraded my computer, and ran fine during a power outage just last week.  I've had these odd forced reboots for roughly the past month.

[puzzlezaddict]

@civvercivver  There are plenty of places to look, including at your motherboard capacitors, and if you're interested, I can take a look at an hwinfo log to see whether anything stands out.

Spoiler

Download hwinfo from here:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

You don't need to install anything if you don't want to; just choose the Portable version, unzip it, and launch it from Downloads or wherever you want.  (If you would like to install, be sure to click the button for hwinfo itself, not for lansweeper.)  Restart your computer, and don't open any other apps.  Launch hwinfo, choose "sensors only," and click the icon that's a sheet of paper with a + sign to start logging.  Save the file to your desktop for easy access later.

Wait five minutes, then launch Sims 3 and play until you see a restart.  The log should be intact up until that point, but please let me know how long it ran anyway; a truncated log is itself a symptom.  You can upload the log to a third-party free filehosting site and link it here.  Please leave it in .csv format, or if you use OneDrive to share, please compress it in .zip format instead.

There are only a limited number of problems that would cause a straight restart, and other than the capacitors, the main one is a power draw that exceeds the capacity of the supply, whether because the PSU itself is insufficient or defective or because it's drawing from an insufficient or unstable source.  So if it's not the PSU, which it still could be—unlikely with your model, but maybe you received a defective unit—the next place to look is upstream.

[civvercivver]

Will do, once I have the opportunity.  Thanks!