Laptop restarts when gaming only when plugged in!

sebatasa

Estimable
Aug 24, 2014
20
0
4,560
Hello, i have a Toshiba C850 laptop and recently it has started to restart when i play games for 2-10 minutes(Dota 2, Skyrim).

This only happens when the laptop is plugged in. When i am using it on battery, i can game normally for an hour or more until the battery dies.

Also this only happens when playing games. When i am browsing, working in office, watching youtube videos, everything works normal.

This is not a overheating issue, since just days before this started i blew out the dust and replaced the thermal paste in my cpu and gpu.

I have no idea why this is happening, if someone had similar problems or has an idea what could be at fault, please share it, i would really love to use my laptop before uni starts, since i have free time now.
 

sebatasa

Estimable
Aug 24, 2014
20
0
4,560
I have tried putting the games(Skyrim and Dota2) on the lowest settings, the random restart still happens when gaming for 2-10 minutes. I also tried Wow(which should be graphically very non demanding) and it crashed again.

One thing i noticed, while trying Skyrim, i afk stood in the game world for over an hour with no problem, but when i started moving around and fighting/doing quests it crashed again in under 10 minutes.
 

turkey3_scratch

Estimable
Herald
Jul 15, 2014
571
0
5,210
That's really interesting about Skyrim how you could stand there. That makes me think it could be a RAM issue, because when enemies appear in a game their data is addressed into the RAM. What particular RAM do you have?

I know RAM sounds silly but this is a very weird problem so anything can help really.
 

sebatasa

Estimable
Aug 24, 2014
20
0
4,560
I have formated my laptop again, so i must reinstall skyrim.

I do have World of Warcraft installed, which also causes random restarts.

After playing WOW for a minute its using 470.000
 

sebatasa

Estimable
Aug 24, 2014
20
0
4,560
Ok, i will check it and let you know!

Btw: The computer is still in warranty, do you think i voided the warranty by opening it up and replacing the thermal paste by myself?
 
G

Guest

Guest
go to task manager -> startup and windows+r msconfig and go to services. Uncheck everything that's not necessary, it may be some startup program leaking memory
 

sebatasa

Estimable
Aug 24, 2014
20
0
4,560
IMPORTANT update:

I have found something, the problem probably has to do with the processor and its power supply/voltage

My CPU usually jumps between 800mhz and 2100mhz, now i have limited minimum CPU rate to 70% and maximum to 90% and when playing older games (WOW), it doesn't crash even when plugged in, when playing more graphically demanding newer games(DOTA2), the problem is still here, but occurs later(around 15 minutes, it usually happened within 5 minutes)

Anyone know what this could mean?

I have read online it could be due to bad capacitors or something else?