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silverberry23's avatar
silverberry23
New Novice
2 days ago

Mini pc crashes and restarts when playing game

I have had my mini pc, a Beelink SER5 Pro Mini Pc, for about 2,5 years and I was always able to play the game with DLC and CC perfectly up until about a month and a half ago when this issue started. Shortly after it started, I replaced the thermal paste and got rid of dust and it worked fine again for weeks up until now.

I game for about 10 min until my pc crashes, and the message "Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart" flashes on the screen for a split second before restarting, so I don't have enough time to provide a screenshot or exact error code unfortunately, but it says something like "Kmode exception not handled".
I downloaded HWinfo and it seems like the issue is because of overheating. Right before my mini pc reaches 90 degrees is when it crashes and restarts.

I'm confused because this seemingly happened overnight and had been working perfect before, never had any overheating/crashing issues. This also only happens with the Sims 4, not any other heavier games.

I'm not a tech person at all (if you can't tell) so any help is greatly appreciated!

3 Replies

  • silverberry23​  I've merged your new post with your previous thread.  Please stick to one thread while troubleshooting.  I stand by my previous post even if you don't think temperature is an issue overall—at the very least, it's something to test separately whenever you change anything about the cooling, even if it's just removing and reapplying thermal paste.

    Your dxdiag shows four different types of BSODs, all dealing with misbehaving drivers, but the errors don't list which driver is responsible (this is normal).  I could find out by looking at some crash dumps.  But given that the bug check codes are all over the map, I think it's better to start with a repair install of Windows.  (This is not a clean install but does refresh OS files.)  Here's how to run one:

    https://www.elevenforum.com/t/repair-install-windows-11-with-an-in-place-upgrade.418/

    Once you've done that, run Microsoft's Driver Verifier:

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/driver-verifier

    It's mostly a tool for developers testing new drivers but can help here too.  Choose the "automatically select all drivers installed on this computer" option and let it do its thing.  Let me know what you find.

    When testing Sims 4, please keep your Mods folder removed.  The one game crash in your dxdiag is most often caused by bad mods or custom content, although there are other causes, and it wouldn't surprise me if in this case it had more to do with the OS issues than the game.  If you do get another crash, I'd like the Reliability Monitor info I listed in my previous post, but only for errors that happen after you run the repair install and Driver Verifier.

  • Sometimes the PC also force restarts, but the last few times the game just turns off out of nowhere, often during a loading screen. 

    I thought it was an overheating issue at first, but now the temperature is fine and it still happens. I play the newest patch update, and with DLC and CC. I tested it and the game still crashes without CC.

    Any help is greatly appreciated, I have no idea why this is happening.

  • silverberry23​  You can see the full bug check code in the Reliability Monitor, among other places.  Click Windows key-R and enter perfmon /rel in the run box, and you'll get a chart listing errors and updates with a column for each day.  You can right-click an error and select "view technical details" for more information.

    If this is in fact a simple case of overheating, it's possible the issue is the mounting of the cooler or even the thermal paste itself.  First, make sure the fan(s) can spin freely and that they do with the computer running.  You can turn it on with the cover off, it's fine.

    If that's not the issue, please take the cooler off again, remove all the paste (isopropyl alcohol works well and is cheap), and reapply it, this time using as little as possible: a single dollop that's somewhere between the sizes of a green or English pea and a chickpea.  You're not trying to create a barrier between the two metal plates, which conduct heat better than the paste ever could.  The point of the paste is to fill in the microscopic air pockets that exist because the metal plates cannot be perfectly smooth.

    And make sure the cooler is mounted as tightly as it can be without bending the frame.  Here again, you're trying to push the metal plates against each other as firmly as possible.  You don't need a power tool to tighten the screws however, and in fact that could be harmful; just do it by hand.

    In general, it's always best to run a test on cooling when you get a new PC as well as when you swap out parts or remove and remount a cooler.  Prime95 is the usual standard, the small FFTs test.  It's basically a power virus for the CPU that you can shut off whenever you want.  A computer with proper CPU cooling should be able to run it indefinitely (or 20-30 minutes for testing) without shutting down.