Why is my laptop randomly shutting itself off?

It sounds like your laptop is overheating. The first thing to test is making sure that your fan is working. If you don't hear it and can't feel any airflow from the exhaust vent, then either your fan or your laptop's fan controller (which is located on the motherboard) is broken. If your fan is working, then the thermal paste between the CPU and the heatsink likely isn't transferring heat properly. Fixing this will require disassembling your laptop and applying new thermal paste. I recommend Arctic Silver 5 or Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste.

Reasons Your Laptop Suddenly Shuts Off

Dirty Fan/Overheating

One of the first and the most likely reason your computer or laptop shuts off randomly, especially when you’re playing a game, is overheating. This is the bane of most computers, especially laptops, since the heat has nowhere to go. It is critical that the computer’s fans are excellent working order to avoid this issue.

Hardware Failure

Another common reason for a random shut down of your computer is a hardware component failure, which is not unheard of, especially on computers that have been refurbished. If you’ve recently added any new hardware this is the time to remove it to see if the shut down issue goes away.

Overclocked CPU Or GPU

If you have enabled overclocking on your computer, it may cause your computer to become unstable when used for more intense activities like gaming or video processing. This problem can be a tough one to verify.

Your best bet would be to ensure that overclocking is disabled on your laptop or PC and then see if that stops the laptop randomly turning off incidents.

Outdated, Missing Or Crashing Device Drivers

Often, the problem with a hardware component causing issues is not the hardware itself but the accompanying driver. Incompatible drivers can cause all sorts of problems. If you’ve tinkered with your operating system or have changed drivers on your computer, this too can be troublesome. A driver crash can always completely shut down a computer.

Computer Virus

A more rare cause of a computer shutting down randomly can be a computer virus. Some computer viruses will actually shut off your computer, and then turn it back on.

These viruses are usually activated by a certain thing you do on a computer, whether it’s a keystroke or opening a particular program. To make sure you have your best defenses up against viruses, make sure you’re running a great background anti-virus program like Malwarebytes, and that you regularly update the virus definitions and scan your computer.

A Faulty Charger, Battery Or Power Supply

If you’re a gamer and your laptop shuts off randomly while you’re playing a game at the usual performance setting, chances are it’s your charger/power source.

Most devices come with specific ratings of the chargers that are meant to be used with the device. Using a lower voltage or higher current adapter can cause your device to not work properly and even shut down.

Enabled Fast Startup In Windows

The Fast Startup feature is aimed to reduce the booting time of a computer after it has been shut down, but it can cause Windows 10 random shutdown issues. Having this feature enabled on your computer, Windows will close all the applications and log off all the users just like it would do for a normal shutdown.

However, before the shutdown completes, the current system state gets saved in the hibernation file. When you boot your PC, Windows doesn’t need to load the kernel, system files, and drivers again. Windows reads the hibernation file to refresh the RAM and significantly reduces the boot up time.

A Lack Of Service

Though computers are usually sturdy, they may at times require proper maintenance. Without getting a service,  laptops may run into overheating, performance and even battery problems.

Get your laptop serviced by a professional to eliminate most of the issues related to your laptop including the computer keeps shutting down problems and any other performance issues.

I have a lenovo x220 and had the same problem. Altough I checked the temp and it wasn’t excessive I have just changed the thermal paste and it has been working for 5 hours without shutting down. Before I couldn’t use it for 20 minutes and afterwards it kept shutting down all the time, even when idle even in the bios. I found a forum thread where this was the solution for many people with the same lenovo.

Techs will tell you to change the motherboard. But it seems that this worked out for many people with this problem.

Another way that should work: right-click the mini power icon on one end of your taskbar. Select Power Options. This will open a window with power settings in Control Panel. Select a plan. (with the newest w10 there should just be one unless you have a custom because it is programmed to be adjustable (balanced)). Click change lan settings then click change advanced power settings. In the new power settings popup expand hard disk and then expand turn off hard disk after and click the down arrow until it says "Never" do this for both battery and when plugged in. this is the solution i found after reading the original answer to this issue.

I fixed mine by replacing the cooling paste never drops out anymore. It shut down every 5 minutes.

Not really solve the issue on my side but upon reducing power consumption items like removing my headset and change to a normal mouse (not gaming mouse), then turning off my screen doesn’t show anymore

I have a Lenovo IdeaPad U310. After about an hour it turns itself off. There is a new SSD and windows 10 x64. It has current drivers. The processors are at a temperature of 50 degrees. The laptop seems fine, but it doesn't overheat, but it still shuts down. It also shuts off outside of memory, for example during a memory test. I use Memtest. Does anyone have an idea?