Intel NUC randomly attempts reboot but indicates not bootable drive found, turning the device off then on reboots successfully

[FretlessKb]

I purchased the device in Oct 2019 from Microcenter Consisting of the following

· Intel NUC Mini PC Kit NUC8i7BEH Core i7, Tall version

· Crucial 16GB DDR4-2400 (PC4-19200) SO-DIMM Memory Module

· Inland Premium 1TB SSD 3D NAND M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive

I also installed a 1 TB Sata SSD in the NUC Case

I installed Windows 10

I've noticed for a while I would leave the device for a period of time 'idling' and come back to find out the NUC was displaying a message 'Not Boot Device Found' or something to that effect. When I turn it off and back on from the front panel, it would boot normally and appear to work fine. Then recently i.e. 12/9 or 12/10 I experienced a re-boot while I was browsing the web. I don't do heavy processing on the NUC the most strenuous workload generally are to compress audio files from .wav to .flac

Searches for NUC reboot led me to the forum and topics concerning temperature related re-booting. I found links to 3rd party software via Intel site and installed CPUID HWMonitor to review temperature data and find out if there might some obvious correlation.

I find the cores run in the mid 30's C, and peak up to 47C which does not seem terrible, The SATA SSD is rock solid at 33 c and the PCIe was pretty steady at 28 C So I have a hard time thinking this is a temp related problem.

Does anyone know what normal temps are for a NUC and what would be a 'high temp' ?

 So Far I have updated the BIOS

from:  BECFL357.86A.0072.2019.0524.1801

to:       BECFL357.86A.0075.2019.1023.1448

I have adjusted some fan settings in Bios so it is essentially on all the time and only change is the PCI temp is holding steady at 27 C a drop of 1 deg C at the cost the fan is always on. 😣

Also what if anything else I could try to resolve the issue?

Any Advice would be welcome.

Thanks in advance

Kb

[LeonWaksman]

Hi @FretlessKb​ 

1. The temperatures you have monitored looks perfectly well. I would leave the cooling fan setting in default.
2. I assume that your Windows is installed on the SSD?
3. The crash may be caused by failure in the SDD (most probably) or in the SODIMM.
4. I suggest that you ask in Microcenter to replace/check the SSD and the SODIMM.

Leon

[n_scott_pearson]

Agree with Leon. Highest liklihood is the SODIMM (memory bus lockup will result in system reset).

...S

[FretlessKb]

Thanks for the quick response. I am hoping that is not the root cause as it is really difficult to detect or prove especially if the chips pass the 'memory tests' But I'll look for a way to test the devices soon. I am pursuing another theory. Since the large majority of the occurances were while I was away from the PC and not using it. I investigated the sleep settings. I found a setting to disable the hard drive after a period of time, and have turned that off. I also turned off the go to sleep after a period of time. The device ran over 24 hours no issues. I am going to keep track of performance and look for other settings related to sleep and power efficiency that might be non nominal.

I had heard for example Windows detected the presence of SSD devices and would disable defrag on such devices, and yet as I was stepping through things I checked in the past I found defrag enabled and having a recent 'history' record of when it ran'

I'll check back in here with any other findings and changes I make in the hopes this might be useful to someone in future.

The NUC is a great form factor and I really like the performance so far (sans the reboots) so I am hoping I can resolve this issue.

Cheers Kb

As of 1/5/2020 - No more issues with random re-starts. The most likely thing I changed was to disable putting the disks to sleep and defragmentation (of SSD ). I've had 1 anomalous restart but it was under very different work situations.

Cheers Kb