- Jan 10, 2024
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Recently, I upgraded my GPU and CPU and put an additional SSD in my PC and found that my old PSU was not sufficiently powerful for the job. After replacing my old PSU, I was still experiencing sporadic crashes and, after some troubleshooting, concluded I had received a defective PSU. However, I am still experiencing intermittent, instantaneous crashes to black and really just need some guidance as the chances of me receiving two defective PSU's in a row are vanishingly slim compared to the chance of this being an error of some kind on my part.
The crashes began after I upgraded my hardware. Initially, my old PSU was 100% the culprit for my crashes, as it was woefully underpowered for the job and I was receiving crashes to black under strain indicative of such. Afterwards, I upgraded to a new PSU and the consistent crashes under strain vanished. However, I now was dealing with extremely sporadic crashes with no indication, warning, or pattern. As before, they were instant shutdowns with no accompanying BSOD with the only error message to be found in the log being "error 41" - that of an unexpected shutdown. Sometimes, they would happen under strain (gaming, rendering videos) and other times they would happen for seemingly no reason at all (receiving a message notification from discord or telegram). At this point, I began using benchmarking software (OCCT, memtest, Prime95, Furmark, Heaven, Crystaldisk ) to try and see what the cause of my crashes was. Noticing that an OCCT power test always caused a crash to black almost instaneously and things like my CPU temperature were not at critical points and that the crash on power test persisted even after putting in my old GPU, I concluded that my PSU must be defective.
Thus, about two weeks ago, I exchanged my PSU for a new one of the same model. This PSU was undoubtedly immediately "better" than the previous one - less crashes and not instaneously crashing on an OCCT power test. However, I quickly came to realize that some version of the same problem was still at play; my PC would crash to black at random times and would fail an OCCT power test more often than not. As such, I naturally assumed that I was mistaken about the PSU being at fault (since these problems were persisting) and that whatever is going on must be because of some type of installation error or something of the sort on my end. I have been digging through forums and performing every type of fix I could find to no avail. In short, I have:
As a last confirmation attempt, I purchased a PSU tester from amazon. According to the instructions, if any of the readings are flashing, it is a sign of a defective unit. When I plugged in my PSU, all of the readings were within expected ranges; all of the voltages were either exactly as they should be or extremely close to what they should be and my PG reading was consistently between 120 and 140 ms; however, my PG light was flickering regardless. Testing on my old PSU to see if this was just an issue with the tester, I found no such flickering.
I think this is a PSU issue but I just really need some confirmation, because at this point, it seems as though it is either my PSU or my motherboard and I just cannot believe the insane luck required to recieve two defective PSUs in a row like this. As well, I have never upgraded my own PC or done this type of troubleshooting before, so I am trying to exhaust all other possibilities to avoid getting a new PSU just to have this problem continue.
Here are my specs:
Please let me know if any further information is needed and thank you in advance.
The crashes began after I upgraded my hardware. Initially, my old PSU was 100% the culprit for my crashes, as it was woefully underpowered for the job and I was receiving crashes to black under strain indicative of such. Afterwards, I upgraded to a new PSU and the consistent crashes under strain vanished. However, I now was dealing with extremely sporadic crashes with no indication, warning, or pattern. As before, they were instant shutdowns with no accompanying BSOD with the only error message to be found in the log being "error 41" - that of an unexpected shutdown. Sometimes, they would happen under strain (gaming, rendering videos) and other times they would happen for seemingly no reason at all (receiving a message notification from discord or telegram). At this point, I began using benchmarking software (OCCT, memtest, Prime95, Furmark, Heaven, Crystaldisk ) to try and see what the cause of my crashes was. Noticing that an OCCT power test always caused a crash to black almost instaneously and things like my CPU temperature were not at critical points and that the crash on power test persisted even after putting in my old GPU, I concluded that my PSU must be defective.
Thus, about two weeks ago, I exchanged my PSU for a new one of the same model. This PSU was undoubtedly immediately "better" than the previous one - less crashes and not instaneously crashing on an OCCT power test. However, I quickly came to realize that some version of the same problem was still at play; my PC would crash to black at random times and would fail an OCCT power test more often than not. As such, I naturally assumed that I was mistaken about the PSU being at fault (since these problems were persisting) and that whatever is going on must be because of some type of installation error or something of the sort on my end. I have been digging through forums and performing every type of fix I could find to no avail. In short, I have:
- Monitored my PC's performance using CPUID HWMonitor during regular usage.
- Run every type of stress test I could on OCCT
- Run GPU stress tests using Heaven Benchmark and FurMark
- Run CPU and GPU stress tests using cinebench
- Tested my CPU and memory with Prime95
- Tested my memory with memtest and the window's memory diagnostic tool
- Tested my HDD and SSDs with CrystalDisk
- Reseated my RAM, including trying only one stick at a time
- Made sure my BIOS was up-to-date (It was running the latest beta version at the time)
- Downgraded my BIOS to the latest stable version
- Tried undervolting my CPU
- Tried running my CPU in ecomode
- Tried overvolting my CPU
- Tried running my RAM in xmp profile
- Enabled Spread Spectrum in BIOS
- Set my power management mode to "prefer maximum performance" from NVIDIA control panel
- Uninstalled and reinstalled my graphic's drivers
- Rewired my PSU several times
- Made sure my GPU connection is in accordance with the manufacture's suggestion (really, making sure I was not using any daisychained cables where I shouldn't be)
As a last confirmation attempt, I purchased a PSU tester from amazon. According to the instructions, if any of the readings are flashing, it is a sign of a defective unit. When I plugged in my PSU, all of the readings were within expected ranges; all of the voltages were either exactly as they should be or extremely close to what they should be and my PG reading was consistently between 120 and 140 ms; however, my PG light was flickering regardless. Testing on my old PSU to see if this was just an issue with the tester, I found no such flickering.
I think this is a PSU issue but I just really need some confirmation, because at this point, it seems as though it is either my PSU or my motherboard and I just cannot believe the insane luck required to recieve two defective PSUs in a row like this. As well, I have never upgraded my own PC or done this type of troubleshooting before, so I am trying to exhaust all other possibilities to avoid getting a new PSU just to have this problem continue.
Here are my specs:
- PSU: Corsair RM750x
- CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X
- GPU: Zotac Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070Ti
- Motherboard: ASRock B450M/ac
- Storage: PNY CS900 500GB SSD, Samsung 870 EVO 2TB SSD, Western Digical WDC 1TB HDD
- OS: Windows 11
- RAM: 32 GB Dual-Channel DDR 4 (both Corsair)
Please let me know if any further information is needed and thank you in advance.
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