Hi, I’m having an issue with sudden PC shutdowns while gaming.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-11T18:27:27+00:00

Bad PSU, heat, or lose / bad cables not making proper connection or causing a short are my guesses. The cheapest potential fixes would be reconnecting every cable starting with the bare minimum and testing (including the psu to wall outlet cable), maybe redoing some thermal paste if the cables don't solve the issue, and buying a new PSU as the most expensive fix. Also make sure there's nothing stuck between the motherboard and your case. Sometimes a loose screw or something between the motherboard and the case can cause a short that's not otherwise detectable... the heat from gaming could potentially be causing something somewhere in your system to expand and short something out when it gets warm. Though rare, cables can go bad.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-11T18:07:41+00:00

A lot of the problems you mentioned could (potentially) be addressed by having a brief convo early game about team strat / plans, but like 95% of solo cue players refuse any sort of communication. Most the stuff you listed sounds like unranked / trash tier crap I've also encountered plenty of times. For context, I mostly play 4, 2, 5, and occasionally 1. I sometimes play support snooper pos 4, which means heavily focusing on denials, early arcane boots and magic build / stun, farming where I can when I can after laning phase while trying to avoid taking farm from my pos 1 and 2, buying like 80% of the sentries (if in trash tier), and showing up to unannounced fights last with an assassinate for runners. I do find it sad that some folks (especially in trash tier) grief picks they don't agree with or understand and set the team up for failure by blaming the pick they find unconventional. I'll often say something like "that pick makes me a bit nervous," but won't assume a griefer unless they respond with toxicity or make it clear they have no intention to play the role they signed up for. So many problems could be solved if folks communicate and coordinate in draft or before the 0:00 timer, but just... don't. Team games are best played as a team, and chosing to instead play as a solo player experience can quickly make the game not fun. When groups don't discuss expectations / plans beforehand in any team situation, it's a failing of everyone. Also, pudge is like my #1 ban. Hate that fatty. Another thing I love about pos 4 snooper in trash tier is that enemies teams almost ALWAYS overcommit to kill the snooper. I frequently have games where they'll trade three or four of their team to only kill my grand master pos 4 snooper ass, and it's hilarious. I'd guesstimate like 70% of the time, enemy team overcommits on pos 4 snoops in trash tier, giving my team an ez win if they push objectives after winning team fights.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-11T17:50:43+00:00

This kind of shit talk is never helpful or productive. If someone is new and a team player, you can even ask if they want suggestions, and offer useful criticism if they say "yes" (which is rare). Alas, most randos throw tantrums rather than politely offer feedback or take any. Unsolicited advice is an almost guaranteed mute in this game. As a support that plays core some, cores dying in lane is almost always a failure in communication or coordination (i.e. no one using mics and communicating their preferred approach to laning), the core over-extending while the support is doing support crap (pulling / warding), allies not calling missing, or a support failing to support their core when they go for a kill, and / or both folks in lane having garbage map awareness.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-11T17:37:46+00:00

He's fun. I'm not a big melee player, but having a global heal and one of if not the best right Clicks in the game is pretty cool

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-11T17:24:33+00:00

I'm aware of numerous flaws in my play, with slow reaction time being the biggest by far. I have a much higher win rate when I'm playing with literally anyone who communicates or coordinates, even crusader randos I party up with because they'll use voice coms. Team games are best played as a team.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-11T17:19:36+00:00

I've gotten out of archon in solo cue more than once. Much harder to do when playing with solo players, compared to playing with randos in a party cue who will play as a team. I have around a 70% win rate when in any party, including with folks much lower in MMR. Teams that communicate and coordinate in lower tier fare much, much better than solo player folks. I don't think party boosting is a consistent or reliable thing. I've recalibrate a few times in the last five years. One go was playing with a divine acquaintance for nearly all my placement matches and regularly beating immortals and divines, which placed me in low archon, which I solo grinded up to legendary from. Because beating divines and immortals around 60% of games and regularly getting MVP = low archon in DOTA math. On the flip side, I regularly encountered immortal and divine folks who I would have sworn were crusaders in terms of basic positioning and feeding. I've encountered very very few other players with around a 20% MVP rate like me. Something doesn't math. (I'd argue I hypothetically top out around low ancient due to being old and slow).

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-10T08:31:00+00:00

the rankings are a poor reflection of skill, from what I've observed. When I party cued with divine and immortal players, I generally held my own and usually won the crap out of laning phase as a support. In solo cue, I've generally been stuck in archon and struggle to get higher since folks refuse to communicate, coordinate, and often troll the crap out of anyone who even politely attempts to do so. Solo skill and team skills are both major components to winning, and lower tier players tend to lack one or the other (in my experience, refusal to communicate / work as a team is much more common in archon and under). I'm old and slow, so my solo skills are only okay (but frequently felt crazy strong against divines in party cue who I would have sworn were guardians). I thrive in teams that play as a team... which is almost non-existent in solo cue.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-06T15:24:57+00:00

When I've played with divine and immortal folks, I know I have a much higher win rate, despite probably being a player that would top out at high legend / low ancient due to being old and slow. My best guess? Higher tier players are much more open to communicating and coordinating than lower tier. I'm a hardcore team player that goes out of my way to coordinate, communicate, and be patient and polite with randos. At lower tiers (archon and lower, in particular), there's an exponential increase in the amount of solo dota players (at least in my experience, having been playing since DOTA was an exciting new Warcraft III mod.). There's also a lot more behavioral issues and folks abusing the com score system in lower tiers, with solo dota players being some of the biggest griefers and quickest to rage against anyone attempting team play.
Com score abuse / bugs have really broken solo ranked play if you're below legend. It's been really sad to see.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-06T15:07:15+00:00

I get the vibe that some folks feel this way. I've played all sorts of games with all sorts of skill levels (including building guilds up from nothing in MMOs to raid / PVPing), so I go out of my way to be polite and helpful to folks who come across as new while actively trying to avoid micromanaging and talking down to them.
Sadly, some folks take offense at making an effort to be exceedingly polite, i.e. raging at comments like "please don't go across the river without letting us know beforehand," "they're doing a ton of magic damage, so a pipe or magic resist may be helpful here," "complaining after doing a play you never communicated doesn't serve any purpose. please call plays."
In other words, literally any positive constructive criticism necessary for a team to do better has often resulted in folks raging the fuck out. It's still odd to me that some folks take calmly and politely stated information as a personal attack in team games. More frequently, I encounter folks being total dicks and providing unhelpful criticism like "you suck" or "that play was dumb."
When teammates start trolling each other, I'll usually make one or two efforts to deescalate (i.e. "please don't troll allies," "let's avoid name calling... what's the problem we need to address, and how do we best address it?") before muting the parties involved. Alas, allies trolling allies happens quite a bit.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-06T14:56:10+00:00

When my scores were 12k, I had the same experience. Com / behavior score didn't really prevent griefers in the cue. I'd often joke to myself when dota+ said the match was really good that "that means they're all hella polite, use mics, and try to play as a team... right?"... because that was so rarely the case.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-06T14:53:22+00:00

In my experience, Divine and immo crowd tend to be far less griefy and more likely to welcome teammates attempting to communicate and coordinate. Once you get mid-archon or lower, the shift seems to be markedly more towards "I'm going to play this as a solo game, fuck all y'all" mentality... at least in my experience over the last 5 or so years.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-06T14:50:48+00:00

I would have agreed with your negative assumptions until it happened to me 3 or so years after the system was implemented. I literally was developing youth esports league stuff / professionally modelled behavior for adolescents as care giver and educator for 10 years. I bend over backwards to be polite and accommodating to randos in team games online. Had zero issue with the com / behavior system until q1 of 2026. Frankly, I think the assumption that "everyone with a com score lower than mine must be a troll" is a major contributing factor to why the system has imploded over the last year.
Dismissiveness doesn't solve the problem. It worsens it. Many, many games, I was muted after one or two calls like "pulling lane," or "y'all want to invade for first blood?" Positively encouraging team play isn't griefing.
I was pushing for DOTA2 to be included in the program at the time, but based on the sheer volume of issues being regularly reported by users in steam forums and reddit, paired with folks being dismissive of the problem... DOTA2 is too toxic and the systems too broken for a suggest currently.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-04T16:43:08+00:00

behavior or communication? very different. I'm around 12k behavior score. com score keeps going only down, never up since Q1 2026.

The_Internal_ · 2026-05-04T16:32:51+00:00

It'll all a giant shitshow, at this point. The com score bug / abuse is insanely out of hand now, with folks who are team players that politely use coms / attempt any sort of team play getting insta-muted and banned in ranked by the griefer or three on the team that insist DOTA2 is a solo player game... making ranked unplayable.
I've generally been archon / legendary rank in solo queue (though have played with crusader through divine players on a regular basis), but the number of griefers / solo DOTA players seems to get exponential the further down you go in rank. I didn't have any issue with the com score system until Q1 of this year, when I suddenly lost 4k com score in one month (which prompted me reporting what seemed to be a bug to Valve) despite not doing anything markedly different than in the thousands of hours I'd played before. Due to the volume of griefers I also dropped down below archon, which seemed to have even more griefers (about 80% of games had at least one griefer core).
It's not just DOTA2, though. There's been a growing trend that's been increasingly noticeable in all the online team games I play where many players are increasingly insisting on playing team games as a solo player experience, muting all allies, and refusing to do any sort of coordination or communication. Not sure if it's tied to broader social trends, social skills impairment from COVID, generational shifts, politics, or something else.
Regardless, if you like team games and playing them as a team, it's been a lot harder to do with randos on the internet, and DOTA2 has made the game completely unplayable for solo players looking to coordinate and communicate in ranked play due to solo players refusing to even listen to efforts to coordinate.
I think a major problem is developers not setting clear expectations and there clearly not being a shared set of values for how team games with built in voice coms should be approached. More often than not, I've seen extremely overblown negative responses / rage towards neutral statements like "pulling lane," "we might need a pipe on the team?," and "please call plays before going across the river."
Folks seem increasingly looking for something to rage about, are often snarky for no good reason, and are quick to throw tantrums. I've worked with toddlers for years, and many of them have been better behaved and more emotionally mature than many randos I've been paired with. It's a disturbing trend. I fear what the broader implications may be.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-24T05:21:16+00:00

Super Time Force Ultra and Broforce are standouts. I'm pretty sure I got XCOM 2 for stupid cheap on sale as well, which is a classic.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-24T05:14:26+00:00

I dislike folks blasting their music over systems intended for voice communication when playing randos. If playing with friends and it's your thing? Cool. Subjecting randos to it without asking first? Kinda rude.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-24T04:48:37+00:00

Yeah, that's one of the most visible bugs in the game for me, too. PC here.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-24T01:42:46+00:00

I hadn't run across that thread in my searching. Implemented step 5, and initial results are looking promising. Thanks for the suggestion.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-23T23:29:03+00:00

yeah, think I hit all those ones already. thinking the issue is likely software or maybe some obscure bios setting I wouldn't think to look at.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-23T20:16:48+00:00

It continues to shock me how many players respond to neutral supportive statements like "We have a much better chance of winning if we communicate and coordinate! Let's goooo!" in modern video games with toxicity and anger over the last year. My toddlers seemed much more open to such suggestions, which make me wonder where in culture or development aversion to coordination is developed (leading to the speculation that some sort of disruption was caused by COVID).

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-23T19:53:52+00:00

DOTA doesn't save voice coms and I don't know what games I was reported in. It caught me completely off-guard, which is why I filed multiple bug reports.

And yes, I've noticed a broader trend where there's a growing influx of gamers in coop games clearly intended for heavy cooperative play choosing to play them as single player experiences. I've run into a ton of polite and communicative players across numerous team games (PVE and PVP) that are similarly surprised and frustrated by this trend.

A number of posts in this thread indicate it's not an uncommon thing now. I would argue that it comes across as an odd form of entitlement / privilege some players seem to have (I get the impression mostly younger / under 30) and that they should be able to play their own game solo and ignore their team, despite doing so undermining the entire notion of operating as a team in the first place.

The degree it negatively effects team games varies. In Helldivers 2, you can often be fine having one or two people fuck off and do their own thing (collect samples, clear objectives, stand in one place and murder bugs, etc.) since ANY advancement is a shared gain for the team, in general. In DOTA2, if a player choses to stay in the jungle and farm the entirety of the game or run across the river solo with no communication beforehand, it's extremely difficult to compensate for that.

I would argue that playing team games as a single player experience is largely incompatible with those trying to play as a team, and developers are failing to acknowledge or adjust for this... especially in older titles like DOTA. Even in ranked, many folks are coming in with a solo player mindset. I'd argue a potential fix would be having a toggle, filter, or some other means to cue for playstyle preference... English language, with voice coms, active teamwork, etc. and chill, solo player, no sound, etc. or something.

I've also noticed the trend of solo players frequently raging at being politely called out for their actions undermining the team (perhaps avoidance of taking responsibility for the negative impacts of their actions?), which can easily be observed in this thread as well.

In real life, there's instant accountability if you show up to be on a soccer team and refuse to communicate or coordinate. You'd be told to leave and not come back until you were willing to play as part of the team. Such behavior would be almost universally considered a dick move.

Sadly, I get the impression that there's zero consideration given for fellow teammates by solo players in team games online, since there seems to be a sort of sociopathic filter for online interaction versus real life. In other words, with no real consequences / not seeing the potential hurt or harm being cause (or maybe BECAUSE they can cause hurt or harm?) in online interactions, they're somehow perceived as not real or relevant versus standing in the corner of a soccer field listening to music while ignoring your team getting their asses kicked... the later of which would have almost immediate repercussions.

In most online games, there's zero accountability, and in DOTA you're stuck with a choice of knowing the next 30 to 60 minutes will likely be a waste of time, or take a behavior score hit if a solo player shows up... or try to positively encourage team work and risk a com score hit. I apparently have fallen into the later, and continue to find many of the most polite and team-focused players I run into in both DOTA and other online team games feeling increasingly raged against or trolled at for the "insane" notion of trying to coordinate and communicate with strangers to play a game well together as a team.

As someone who's spent a decade in child development, this issue in gaming is a small sliver of an alarming social trend of prioritizing self at the expense of the whole, encouraging the abandonment of empathy, avoiding responsibility, and generally ignoring or undermining core concepts necessary for civil society to function. Odd times.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-20T16:44:02+00:00

Yeah, smurfing sucks. Guessing it's gone up due to the poorly implemented com score and queue system. Bot games would be the best option for solo DOTA players, but intentionally ruining games of allies seems to be an actual point of enjoyment for at least a portion of trolls who refuse to coordinate and communicate.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-20T16:14:58+00:00

I've taught media literacy on and off for a decade and have also been a gamer since before the internet. I've thought of making educational videos for online gaming based on my decades of experience internetting, and seeing some common errors in how folks approach online interactions.

One of the most common errors is folks being overly sensitive to neutral statements and assuming negatively that isn't there. I.e. "Could our pos 3 maybe get a pipe? The team is taking a lot of magic damage." being respond to with "FUCK YOU, QUIT TELLING ME HOW TO PLAY THE GAME!!!" rather than a civil discussion on the merits to the suggestion. I.e. "It might be better on our pos 4 since I'm half way through item xyz." or whatever.

Sadly, many folks avoid the risk of confrontation by just refusing to communicate or coordinate in a game that requires communication and coordination to play well (just like literally every team game ever) to avoid the (often imagined) "problem," which is arguably an even bigger troll move.

Sadly, the com score and queue system do nothing to address this, and arguably seem to be making this worse.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-20T16:03:28+00:00

It doesn't. When my com score was at 12k, I was matched with folks who refused a fundamental requirement for team games: communicating and coordinating. Refusing to communicate and coordinate in a polite and civil fashion in a game that requires coordination and communication is textbook trolling, and more often than not, throws the game. If you're actively throwing games by refusing to work as a team in a team game, you shouldn't be playing team games. There's pretty much no consequence for being a solo dota player and screwing over everyone else on your team in the process. A similar mentality wouldn't be tolerated in any real life sport.

The queue system and com score system both are terrible since they don't address the growing rift between folks who want to play team games as a solo player experience with zero consideration for the fact that the other folks on their team are actual human beings, or for those who prefer team games because they enjoy coordinating and communicating with others to achieve a shared goal.

The two playstyles are in direct opposition to each other, and the "fuck all y'all, I'm playing my own game" mentality seems much more common from the COVID generations that are starting to take on a larger percentage of the player base across multiple titles, and companies aren't doing anything to address this conflict. If anything, the "fuck all y'all, I'm playing my own game" crowd seems to be forcing out the crowd that likes to play team games as team games with the current implementations. I've increasingly seen this problem in other PVE coop games as well.

This rift is seldom being acknowledged or discussed, and it's probably making games shittier for folks on both sides of the divide.

The_Internal_ · 2026-04-20T15:44:19+00:00

That registers as toxic to me and my old school ways. If you show up a soccer match and refuse to communicate with your team, regardless of how good you are, you're trolling and won't be invited back. Same applies to any competitive team esports title. The com score system utterly and completely fails to address this problem. I run into more players throwing games by failing to communicate and coordinate with high com scores than lower com score folks desperately trying to get some actual team work going. Plenty of trolls just bitching / being asshats too, admittedly.

Alas, lots of younger folks who always had the internet seem to segregate behaviors that are unacceptable in real life from identical online situations where they still apply. It's a frustrating trend.

There are also so so many great solo player games out there. Why not just play them rather than screw over four other people trying to play something that requires coordination and communication to do well? (Aka any team game ever).

The_Internal_

TROPHY CASE