Power Cuts Out/ Pc Random Reboot (Square Enix doesn't even care)

[ShadeKun]

After saying goodbye to friends and proceeding to uninstall final fantasy xiv I'd like to leave my two cents here now. It's not fair finding a game you like connecting to people, make friends and then be trolled by the game itself and the square enix support and be forced to leave it.

So to start things out, I started playing ffxiv with an Ati Radeon HD 5770 wich lasted quite a good amount of time but was getting to old for the newer games and since I had an i5 2,5k I decided it would be a good time to upgrade the good old graphics card. So I went out and bought myself a Gigabyte Windforce 3 GTX 770 4gb ram. And oh boy was it worth it, this graphics card lets me play anything I want (or most) on maxed settings without making any fuss. But to get to the point of this thread FF XIV started developing an interesting behavior. It would randomly reboot my computer whenever I'd be inside a dungeon, no matter when what or where, it'd just happen. So facing this problem out of my way I went to google this problem and try and fix it so I'd be able to play. Now what did I find as main causes for this:

1. Overheating
2. PSU
3. Drivers

Hum I doubted it was overheating since overheated computers usually show a couple of symptoms, one of them being that the computer wont start again immediately to prevent further damage to the computer, but I didn't wanna exclude things right away so time to work. Performed several Stress tests on the gpu, cpu and ram. Nope didn't overheat, benchmark it is! Temperatures all normal cpu didn't get higher than 70 and gpu was resting at 55 not higher than 65 degrees. I still thought cpu was a bit high so I went and reapplied thermal paste to it, cleaned the heat sink and dusted off all the fans. Got Msi Afterburner and increased the fan speed so no high temperatures would ever be reached. So right now my pc is acting as an air conditioner unit keeping my room fresh instead of heating it... Time to play games and check it out. Wolfenstein the new order sounded good to me. Played it from beginning to end without stopping on maxed graphics not once it crashed. Cool lets try ffxiv, POP reboot. Siiiiiigh, NEXT!

It was severely bothering me the computer was just rebooting and no blue screens were showing or dump files being created so quickly I went and unticked the auto restart function and made sure the dump files would be created into the minidump folder. Every time it would restart nothing would happen. No blue screens after changing the options. Until I caught one, Stop 0x04f with the driver at fault being ntoskernel.sys. Probs memory corrupted or hard drive? Lets do a check. 10 hours checking the memory and a full disc check proved otherwise, everything is fine. So this plus the other stress tests and the only game crashing being FF made me rule out PSU and rest of hardware.. So has to be a software issue right?

Drivers! Nope nope nope nope nope, not old not beta not root installs not clean installs, not even using display driver uninstaller and installing it fresh would fix the issue. Can't tell how many drivers I tried but I can say it got to the point of frustration that I said ***k it lets format the pc. Look at this PC all new windows fully updated its running better than ever. Damn this time its gonna work for sure! Hahahahahahahah I was so wrong ye I did a couple of fates and was happy entered an instance halfway through POP reboot. Well I'm out of resources I have no idea what this could be and since the only game with this problem is Final Fantasy XIV maybe the Square Enix support will help me out I'm sure this isn't new to them. So I tried and describe the best I could my problem to them and the tests I had done already, due to some reason the system form wasn't accepting the copy paste of my system information and kept complaining about too many characters but I still tried and give as much as I could in hopes this would get sorted out.

After getting the standard Bot Email saying your issue as been received and will be replied to within 2 business days (which they did) I finally got this pearl in the mail. FINALLY SOMEONE WHO'S BEEN TRAINED FOR SO LONG AND STUDIED SO HARD IN COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY AND HAS BEEN PREPARED TO HANDLE THINGS LIKE THIS. SOMEONE YOU CAN COUNT ON!

"Dear Customer,

Regarding your request for account support. Please find your answer below.

If you are experiencing crashing at any point you will want to go over the things known to crash the game listed below.

1. If you use a game pad, and have Force Feedback on, you need to turn Force Feedback off.

2. If you are using a router, Internet Connection Sharing or a Proxy servers:
Internet Connection Sharing will not work correctly, Proxies will not work correctly, satellite will not work correctly and routers need to forward the port ranges 54992-54994, 55006-55007, 55021-55040

3. If you have any programs running in the background during game play:
You need to use "msconfig" at the windows RUN program window, go to the startup tab and uncheck everything except SYSTRAY, and SCANREG only in windows 98 and ME. For Windows XP and Windows 2000 you can uncheck the entire list.
NOTE: Your ISP may require software to run in the background. If you uncheck the whole list and then cant connect to the Internet then call you¡Çre ISP and find out what that software is called so you can leave it checked on.

4. If you use a localized version of Windows, i.e. Korean Windows or use a Language Pack: If you use language pack you need to set it back to English or uninstall it
A localized version of Windows will not work correctly.

5. Make sure that your drivers for your video card, sound card, and motherboard drivers are up to date. The game requires that your video card be an AGP card, PCI will not work. Also if you have an AGP card and the AGP Texture Acceleration option on the Display tab of DXDIAG is not enabled; you will need to reinstall the driver. If you have Anti-aliasing turned on in the configuration options for your video card please try turning it off.

6. If you have a on-board sound card, i.e. built onto the motherboard, these cards can tend to be of low quality and most are not DirectX 8.1 compatible. Even if you don¡Çt use sound in-game, if the card is not disabled, then it is working with other devices and may cause the game to not work correctly.

7. If you have done any kind of over-clocking to your system: CPU or your video cards GPU - we understand this is done a lot with serious game players, but it very well could cause crashing or freezing.

8. If the entire PC is crashing or freezing, it could also be the result of a heat or voltage issue. Please ensure that you have proper cooling within your system and that you have enough voltage in your Power Supply to support your system.

9. If you have the Enable Hardware Mouse Cursor option turned on in the FINAL FANTASY XIV Config tool, you will want to turn it off.

10. Sometimes if the sound hardware acceleration is at full acceleration, this will cause a crash, and you will want to turn it down on the sound tab using DXDIAG at the Windows Run command dialog box.

11. Ensure that DirectX 8.1 or greater is properly installed on your PC.

NOTE: It is never a bad idea to have all the current Windows service packs, and updates installed on your system provided by Microsoft at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com .


Thank you for contacting the SQUARE ENIX Support Center."



Wait what? That's it? I mean did you even read my email? What part of this addresses my problem? Wait huh? Did I read this right?

"the game requires that your video card be an AGP card, PCI will not work. Also if you have an AGP card and the AGP Texture Acceleration option on the Display tab of DXDIAG is not enabled; you will need to reinstall the driver. If you have Anti-aliasing turned on in the configuration options for your video card please try turning it off."

AGP? Are you serious? Is this 1998? Was there some time machine I missed and I just lost track of it or are you dead serious?

Well jokes aside. Can't rely on Square Enix support so only one thing left. Uninstall and move on.

To conclude this huge cry for attention that I know it will either be dismissed or deleted I'd just like to say I'm not alone in this that this is a known issue and there's alot of people out there with this problem.

1. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-PC-to-restart.
2. http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...778357#3778357
3. http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/67805...eborn/69194939
4. http://forums.evga.com/Black-screen-...-m2133926.aspx
5. http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?foru...40865188529272

So unfortunately for me I'm forced to quit the game or play it constantly crashing and getting kicked out of groups not even being able to do end game instances because everyone has a job to do there, but in hopes that people that have the same issue will stay strong and make square enix fix their s***.

Anyways much love to Shizaru Tia, Reiko Kawakami, Metal Reaver, Shalyna and everyone else from SBF I'll miss you guys a bunch. Gl hf GG wp

PS: The forum logged me out and I had to retype all of this again. GG ME

[Shizaru88]

Will miss you! Hope to see you around in the future

[Kerberon]

At a guess its the psu. ff14 is not well optimised and draws more current than many other games. With a new card that is going to draw more than your old one, this is my best guess.

[Raist]

At a guess its the psu. ff14 is not well optimized and draws more current than many other games. With a new card that is going to draw more than your old one, this is my best guess.

QFT. That card is designed to consume 230W by itself---2x 8-pin connectors just to power the beast. Each of those 8-pins is there to provide up to 150W each, and then there is the 75W that goes through the PCIE slot. So right there, you potentialyl have a headroom of up to 375W that could be consumed by a graphics card. That's not including up to the 125W (or higher as they keep stacking more cores) that may be needed for the CPU, then all your RAM, Fans, drives, USB devices, sound card, north/south bridge, etc. When you're playing with that level of design, you need a very robust certified PSU.

Review the specs of your older and newer card. Note that the power requirements of this new card (230W) are more than double the need of your previous card(~110W). You may have needed to included a higher end PSU along with your new GPU. If you were on par with what was needed for your 5770, you very well may be underpowered for your new 770.

Note also that beast has 3 fans on it that are not exhausting the heat out of the case--it blows it straight down towards the bottom, which in turn is going to warm the cooler air and then come right back up and get recycled and potentially come back even warmer. You essentially have a mini space heater in there now. Need to be exhausting more air out of the case now, maybe even actively drawing air in from the bottom/front if you weren't already. You are going to need good airflow through that case more so now than ever.

Now, couple this with the fact that FFXIV is not optimized very well (unlike all the other games you play, which may also be using higher DX levels native to the OS). XIV is still using DX9 and portions of DX8.1 code. Ever since Vista, ANY calls for DX below DX10 are always run through an emulation layer (in other words, by design it can at times make them actually more CPU dependent than GPU dependent). Direct hardware access was nixed with the release of Vista--the API's are much more CPU intensive by comparison to XP and 9x Windows. What this means is that XIV can hammer the piss out of all of your subsystems at once. By comparison, each of those stress tests you ran were biased to stress particular subsystems over others--not stressing them equally all at once, and if they were tapping DX, they may not have been using DX9/DX8 calls to do it either. So you may have been getting an apples/oranges comparison with your testing.

Another thing to consider is that the voltage regulation on your motherboard may not be up to snuff. It's not uncommon for the capacitors to dry out, skewing the efficiency. Your CPU, RAM, PCIE slots, and/or north/southbridges may not be getting a stable power supply when such a wide-scale demand is put on the system when running XIV. I faced this problem with a Gigabyte m-board within about 4 months of installing it years ago--it couldn't even run FFXI reliably. Fortunately, they have a really good replacement policy--I actually got a newer revision with "harder" caps in it, and it's been rock solid for about 5 years now. The same thing happened to me with an MSI board back in the 90's as well. Note also that this phenomenon can also apply to the VRM's on the GPU as well, though it is less common (it's usually more an issue of cooling the GPU's VRM's than them flat out dying on you).

TDLR:
FFXIV is much more demanding on all your subsystems at once than any of the other games/benchmarks. You may not have been stressing the system in the same way. That particular graphics card has nearly double the power demands of the cards we are used to dealing with, so you may need a better PSU--if you didn't upgrade the PSU with your GPU, that may indeed be an issue. That card is also generating a lot of heat that is not getting exhausted from your case, causing more heat to build up inside the case that will impact all other subsystems stability---need to be exhausting more heat out of the case. Enjoy your new space heater! ^-^

[ShadeKun]

Now this, this is an answer. Wish you'd work for square enix support Raist.

To reply to you tho, the case itself is quite open, I've made my share of modifications to make sure proper air flow goes through it and trust me the temperatures are stable enough and not rising at all. Related to the stress tests, I did stress test the gpu alone once but then I ran several at the same time because I thought exactly what you mentioned "FFXIV is much more demanding on all your subsystems at once than any of the other games/benchmarks" and the system was stable. What I forgot to include in my testing was the fact that the game is a multiplayer and there's a stream of data also being sent and received by the computer while the whole system is being pushed. So I went and downloaded another multiplayer game, luckily for me I got a Nosgoth key (another game by square enix) and truth be told soon enough pc crashed. So after reading up and actually searching for my psu (Nox Urano 600w) and my graphics card was like instant solution, need a new psu, which is a shame really cause when I bought my card the tech that sold it talked with me about the psu I had and about the connectors for it and he said it should be fine. Oh well. Getting an 80 plus certified soonish and everything will be sorted out hopefully. Shame that I had to waste over a week of own research and actually posting here to achieve a conclusion. Again thank you for your help Raist and Kerberon too, proving to be more reliable than square enix.

[Stryder_Lune]

Can you post PC specs? I had a similar issue when installing my new R9 290 where PC would just crap out on me. I do believe it is your power supply as said above. I had a Corsair CX600M, and it only had two 8-pin connectors, and one was needed for something else, while the graphics card used the other. Sadly, you cannot draw a ton of power from just one cable, you need to have it coming from two separate cables, or else your graphics card wont be getting the power it needs. I ordered a Corsair RM850 (amazing power supply), and had plenty of 8-pin slots to use. I now run the graphics card with no problems whatsoever!

:EDIT:
Sorry, just read your reply above! I suggest buying a Corsair AX or RM series power supply (other models can be dodgy), SeaSonic, or Cooler Master V series power supplies, they're all very high quality. While the 770 certainly isn't a huge power drawer, I'd still buy a 750W+ PSU with at least an 80+ Gold rating.

[Elliott]

My girlfriend recently got a PC, which has the following specs:
i7 4770k
GTX 770
8GB RAM 1600MHz
Z87 ASUS motherboard I believe
650W modular PSU

It runs perfectly, no problems at all. The power to the GPU goes through two cables, so that might help too I suppose. As already mentioned, it's probably because of not enough power.

[Duuude007]

The comment about the PCI/AGP is misleading. PCI is indeed older than AGP. PCIX and PCIe are newer.

When the system rebooted, did it beep as it was first booting? How many beeps? This would tell you a lot about the issues.

[ShadeKun]

Sadly, you cannot draw a ton of power from just one cable, you need to have it coming from two separate cables, or else your graphics card wont be getting the power it needs.

My girlfriend recently got a PC, which has the following specs:
i7 4770k
GTX 770
8GB RAM 1600MHz
Z87 ASUS motherboard I believe
650W modular PSU

It runs perfectly, no problems at all. The power to the GPU goes through two cables, so that might help too I suppose. As already mentioned, it's probably because of not enough power.

The gtx was actually connected with 2 8 pins but if you search Nox Urano 600w like the 4th link that shows up on google is someone having the same issue as me, thats just an old bad psu. So definitly getting a new one, ty for the help anyways guys.

The comment about the PCI/AGP is misleading. PCI is indeed older than AGP. PCIX and PCIe are newer.

When the system rebooted, did it beep as it was first booting? How many beeps? This would tell you a lot about the issues.

Ye but if you have to mention it it's just degrading we both know the transition from agp to pci express has happened a long time ago much less the pci to agp one. Erm no, the system would just boot up normally, standard beep, I know what you mean tho by number of beeps and how long each beep but no its just a power failure. Thanks for the help too tho.

I'll update this topic when I get a new psu and let you guys know if its working. Ty all for your help!

*Again proving the comunity is more helpful than the game support *whistle**