Asus power surge protected/thought i fixed

[troys1989]

So a friend of mine built my pc for me (I don't know very much) and it worked fine for a period of around a month or two. I then began experiencing a shut down and the bios screen would pop up saying that a surge was detected in the psu and it shut down the computer. I bought an external surge protector after it kept happening for a few weeks, and it fixed the issue for 3 or 4 days where I gamed a decent amount.
Not sure what to do, It would happen while playing dota 2 and while just surfing the web. My friend told me to turn off the anti-surge protection in the bios screen - not sure if I should do that? I'm not entirely sure how to check out my entire set of specs, pretty much a newb. Intel(R) core i7-4790k cpu 4gigz nvidia geforce gtx 980 asus z97-a motherboard

 

[westom]

I bought an external surge protector after it kept happening for a few weeks, and it fixed the issue for 3 or 4 days where I gamed a decent amount.

It did not fix anything. You made conclusions from subjective reasoning and from observation. Both are symptoms of junk science reasoning.

A surge can a be low voltage, a spark, a high current, a low current, or a high voltage. All are completely different. Which one is your surge? The only useful answer is quantitative - ie comes with numbers.

In your case, the Asus reports on things after the PSU and not about anything before the PSU (on AC power cord). It is reporting problems with the power system. PSU is only one component of that system. To say what is defective (or learn if the Asus volt meter needs calibration) means borrowing or buying a digital volt meter and requesting instructions as to how and what to measure. BTW, many YouTube videos have it wrong or are incomplete.

Surge protector did nothing useful. Does not even claim to protect from the other and destructive type of surge. But is widely recommended by many who have no idea what it does and who routinely ignore its specification numbers.

 

[troys1989]

I didn't actually think I fixed it, it was more to provide a context of the situation and how things had happened. It would never last longer than 30 or so minutes before and for some reason it worked for 4 days when I plugged it in, just wanted to express that - since I'm a super newb I wasn't sure what info would be relevant.
So from here I need to get a digital volt meter, find reliable instructions for usage and I'm assuming don't mess with the boot tool of anti-surge protection in the bios.
Thanks for your previous response as well.

 

[westom]

... find reliable instructions for usage

"Request" instructions. Resulting and posted numbers from a meter is followed by technical replies that say what is or is not defective.

Yes, that surge message is simply saying something is wrong. Changing it would only cure symptoms.

BTW, we fix things firstmost to learn. Normal is for a defective part (ie PSU) to work fine. If a PSU was defective when purchased (and still booted the computer), well, a meter back then may have identified the defect before it caused problems. What is defective and what is a problem can be two completely different events. If something fails, a defect exists. If something is working, a defect may or may not exist.