MSI GT780DXR - rebooting

Rawry

Beta member
Messages
5
Location
New Zealand
Hi. I have a MSI GT780DXR laptop which is a couple years old now (out of warranty) and I have been experiencing some random reboots since relocating from Canada to New Zealand. I initially thought that it might be either an overheating issue or perhaps an issue with the voltage change putting additional strain on the AC adapter since I had never had this issue in North America.

System specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz
16GB DDR3 (4x4GB)
Nvidia Geforce GTX570M
2x500GB 7200RPM Striped RAID

Things I have done:

Took the laptop apart and cleaned and reapplied thermal paste to the CPU and GPU; cleaned any dust. My temperatures are stable and under 85C for the GPU and 75C for the CPU while performing stress tests and under 50C while idling.
Tested the AC adapter which is outputting a stable 19.5V.
Reformatted/reinstalled windows and tried a number of different nvidia graphics drivers, all with the same result. Also updated windows and installed the latest drivers for everything.
Ran memtest - everything came back OK
Flashed the BIOS.
Ran chkdisk - everything came back OK
Ran driver verification.
Ran furmark, OCCT, and prime95 stress tests - again, temperatures are stable. FPS are stable.
Ran IntelBurnTest - Everything fine. Gflops are between 48 and 54, which appears to be normal for my version of the i7.

Additional observations:
It does not reboot while on battery power -- only when the adapter is plugged in.
When it shuts down, there is no warning. No error log in the Event Viewer (other than the standard "you had an unexpected shutdown" type message) It is as if the power was just turned off.
Stress tests seem to run fine. Generally it shuts down shortly after I end the stress test or following heavy GPU/CPU loads but seldom/never during.
It can go all day without shutting down, but once it starts rebooting, it generally will reboot several times in a row. If I leave it overnight, it is generally good for several hours after I first boot it up.
If I drain the battery, the reboots happen much more frequently. It also happens more frequently if the battery is removed (even if I am not running any sort of stress test or gaming)
This problem happens regardless of whether or not I am overclocked.

By google searching, I have seen a lot of people with this same model of laptop who have had very similar issues who haven't pinpointed the cause (or the cause was something I have already tested for)
 
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The best thing I would do in your case is to try a different adapter.
 
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I have the same laptop, and I haven't had this issue.

I'd either try a different adapter, or maybe plugging the adapter into a surge protector. Are you using one of those power converters for changing the outlet type to that country's outlets?
 
Additional observations:
It does not reboot while on battery power -- only when the adapter is plugged in.
When it shuts down, there is no warning. No error log in the Event Viewer (other than the standard "you had an unexpected shutdown" type message) It is as if the power was just turned off.
Stress tests seem to run fine. Generally it shuts down shortly after I end the stress test or following heavy GPU/CPU loads but seldom/never during.
It can go all day without shutting down, but once it starts rebooting, it generally will reboot several times in a row. If I leave it overnight, it is generally good for several hours after I first boot it up.
If I drain the battery, the reboots happen much more frequently. It also happens more frequently if the battery is removed (even if I am not running any sort of stress test or gaming)

Your problem is with the adapter your using and how much power that laptop is taking in.
Didn't you say that laptop worked fine in the usa ?
Well when you moved from canada to new zealand most countries differ on power usage.
I would say your main problem is coming from power usage.
CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting
When your battery is full, extract this into a folder and excute it.
There should be a tab to show you the psu and how much voltage it has.
Check amazon uk or ebay uk for an adapter.
Since my browsers are all jacked up for some unknown reasons I can't perform a search for you.
 
Ordered a new adapter from trademe (NZ equivalent of ebay) which should be here within the next couple days. Yes, I am using an adapter to change from the American type plug to fit in a NZ outlet. I believe NZ uses a 220V outlet which is less than the 240V that the adapter is rated for, so in theory, the voltage should be fine. Someone suggested that perhaps there are surges here that might go over 240V which could cause the reboots, so perhaps a surge protector is a good idea.

I ran HWmonitor and did some stress testing with it running. The computer hasn't rebooted at all today, but I did a OCCT power supply test which caused the processor to overheat while overclocked (the test stopped when one of my sensors hit 90C but this did not cause a reboot.) Nothing reaches that temperature when I run processor stress tests with prime95 and OCCT, just the power supply test.
 
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Someone suggested that perhaps there are surges here that might go over 240V which could cause the reboots, so perhaps a surge protector is a good idea.

Was going to suggest that as well. Not necessarily power surges, but possibly power dips (brown-outs), or un-clean power due to bad wiring.
 
I am relatively certain that the problem is due to an overheating AC adapter. I have been cooling it off every time it gets hot and haven't had any rebooting issues since. I will know for sure when the new adapter comes (hopefully today.)
 
How hot does it get while it's charging? Is it too hot to even hold? Are you putting it on the ground (non-carpeted) where there's airflow?
 
How hot does it get while it's charging? Is it too hot to even hold? Are you putting it on the ground (non-carpeted) where there's airflow?

Almost too hot to hold. I have it sitting on a thinly carpeted floor most of the time. Maybe I'll try putting it on a book or something.
 
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