PC restarts once before bootting (intermittent issue)

[limitedaccess]

Looking for some opinions on this.

Because this isn't a persistent issue I'd like to get some probabilities on various causes before trying component swapping.

PC will power on with fans spinning up before anything is displayed on monitors it will stop then start again by itself and proceed to boot normally. Extremely intermittent issue, maybe once every few weeks or more? Machine is turned on and off once a day.

System -
2500k stock
MSI P67a-gd65
2x8GB DDR3 (Corsair 1600 CL9, using XMP)
GTX 970
1 ssd. 4 hdds.
2 140mm. 4 120mm.
Creative Audigy 4 SE

The only other known issue is the bottom PCI slot might be defective. PC was crashing randomly awhile back until I removed the sound card which I thought was the culprit. But later on I decided to reinstall it on a different slot and it seems to be fine.

Depending on the probable causes I may plan around it a platform upgrade (if mobo) or PSU upgrade before a complete failure.

 

[sswilson]

Did you try reseating all your connectors / components?

After that... my first guess on random boot restarts is mem related and I'd bump the mem V up a notch. (within reason of course).

 

[Jokester]

It's an Intel thing. It's not really an issue other than it might bother some people. I have heard clearing cmos can help. I just let my systems do it. But I rarely shut them down. Usually just leave them in sleep mode.

 

[bignick277]

I've had this issue before. Sometimes intermittent like yours. Sometimes rebooting several times. Sometimes normal boot. But once in windows no issues until next boot from off. In my case, it turned out the metal locking clip on one of my SATA cables was touching the graphics card causing a short and rebooting. Managed to fix the problem by putting a strip of electrical tape across the metal clips. Haven't had an issue since. Not saying this is your issue, but it's worth checking, just in case.

 

[limitedaccess]

I've had the memory possibility being mentioned a few times. I actually hadn't considered that before as I have not experienced any actual crashes and the memory handled 12hrs+ of Prime95 smallFFTs.


I may have to look into reseating everything, although I'll probably try to lump this in wihte something else as the issue isn't really urgent.

Never heard of this Intel issue actually, will look into it.

I thought it could be a cabling issue as well as the power connectors and sata cables are really packed in at the moment. The problem is I'm using 5 drives, the Define R3 is an "older" (comparatively speaking) so the spacing behind the mobo tray is what now be considered rather narrow, and the PSU cables are rather tight with some over sized shrink wraps on the sleeves (really forced to bend).

 

[bignick277]

I thought it could be a cabling issue as well as the power connectors and sata cables are really packed in at the moment. The problem is I'm using 5 drives, the Define R3 is an "older" (comparatively speaking) so the spacing behind the mobo tray is what now be considered rather narrow, and the PSU cables are rather tight with some over sized shrink wraps on the sleeves (really forced to bend).

I'm not sure, but I think you may have misunderstood. I wasn't talking about power cables. I was talking literally about SATA cables with metal clips. Like these ones:

Here's a picture of what I had to do with my computer:

As you can see, those sata cables on my system are literally touching my GFX card (I have 6 Hard Drives and 2 ROMS x1 DVD x1 BluRay). But because those metal clips were touching my GFX card, it was causing a short and repeated reboots. As you can see from the pic, I put electrical tape across the clips to insulate them from the graphics card. Solved my problem. As I said before, I doubt this is your issue, but it would be a good idea to check for it just in case.

 

[KaptCrunch]

another thing to check is firmware for your motherboard but first look what REVISION is yours, its printed on MB also noticed that MSI say they only list B3 For P67A-GD65 is that what box say ..... if no (B3) then MSI isn't supporting your model MB P67A-GD65

I see 2013-01-09 ver:4.3 for P67A-GD65(B3)


best use their Live Update 6 to update bios to make sure you get correct bios

 

[JD]

Is the power unstable in your area? Do your lights flicker? Might just be that the machine is losing power at some point when it's "shutdown" since it's not really entirely off.

Usually I see this happen when you unplug the PC and plug it in. Thinking maybe a UPS might be a worthwhile investment.

 

[ZZLEE]

New Motherboard Battery is not bad investment. They can cause a hole mess of hard to track down problems.

 

[smith_more]

Seems like problem with SMPS, try to install another SMPS, this might help