Question Generally speaking - What are the symptoms of a PSU problem if the system still works (sometimes) ?

[TrufflesG]

Windows 10 Machine
Crucial 1TB SSD
Nvidia GeForce 1060 6G
Rog Strix 470F gaming MB
16GB RAM
600watt PSU

My PC made a strange noise the other night, somewhat actually like a fart.....and immediately locked up and went dead.

I disconnected all peripherals and any connected devices including any internal Media ports, USB hubs etc.
It will boot and run....for a while...then it randomly locks up again.
I made sure that ALL fans are working normally (they are).

Anyone care to take an educated (or WAG) as to what went wrong?

Thanks

 

[DSzymborski]

An educated guess involves knowing the exact PSU.

Intermittent failures can very well be the PSU. A junk PSU can even damage your components slowly over a long period of time before you ever even notice a problem, similar to the Pound of Bacon Every Day For Breakfast diet.

 

[TrufflesG]

After 7 hours, it froze up again.

I guess that rules out the PSU.

 

[USAFRet]

After 7 hours, it froze up again.

I guess that rules out the PSU.

Nothing is ruled until proven otherwise.

 

[DSzymborski]

After 7 hours, it froze up again.

I guess that rules out the PSU.

Why does that rule it out? Did you try a new one? What was the old one? What was the new one?

The lack of information given makes any further assistance impossible. You might be better off bringing it into a local shop, where they can physically look at your PC without needing your cooperation to provide crucial info.

 

[TrufflesG]

The original PSU was a WT WPO-600QV2 600WATT

The replacement is a Thermaltake PS-SPD-0600NPCWUS-W

Because the system is acting the same after replacing the PSU I think it is a good bet it was not the PSU itself causing the issue

It may not be 100% proof or evidence, but I'll bet the farm anyday on a 95% chance like this seems to be.

 

[DSzymborski]

The original PSU was a WT WPO-600QV2 600WATT

The replacement is a Thermaltake PS-SPD-0600NPCWUS-W

Because the system is acting the same after replacing the PSU I think it is a good bet it was not the PSU itself causing the issue

It may not be 100% proof or evidence, but I'll bet the farm anyday on a 95% chance like this seems to be.

I wouldn't be that confident. You replaced one junk-tier PSU with another one.

And damage can be indirect; the GPU can be damaged, damage caused by the first junk PSU.

Are you using an APU or a CPU? You haven't even told us what CPU you're using in the board.

 

[TrufflesG]

CPU is a Ryzen 7 2700
There is no integrated graphics so it is a CPU.
I think it's highly unlikely two working PSU's would have the identical issue. I think I can rule out the PSU itself at this point, for all intents and purposes here.

Odd....the guy at the computer store spoke highly of the first junk PSU. But then I guess that's expected.

I have had OZ PSU's and a few others that might not be considered junk but I personally didn't find them superior in any way.
What would be your personal recomendation on a 600watt PSU ?
I guess I'd have to put them on an oscilloscope to actually see any differences.
The only thing that could make them better is the components inside....specifically the capacitors, mosfets and pcb design quality.

I happen to have several o-scopes, a Hitachi....and a hand held digital LED display unit.. maybe I'll do a comparison.
I may test the input side (AC) and the DC side (output) separately just to see the quality of the isolated parts of the PSU boards.
Should be interesting.

 

[TrufflesG]

I have replaced the original GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GPU with a different GPU, and the same issue persists.

Fortunately it looks as if I can rule out the GPU now as well.

Beginning to believe it is the mainboard that took a hit or simply failed due to no external cause. It happens.

Could also be the CPU or RAM. The latter of which I just downloaded Memtest to run a a test on it and see if it shows any errors.

 

[TrufflesG]

An educated guess involves knowing the exact PSU.

Intermittent failures can very well be the PSU. A junk PSU can even damage your components slowly over a long period of time before you ever even notice a problem, similar to the Pound of Bacon Every Day For Breakfast diet.

Agreed. The only "bacon" I ever eat is morningstar

 

[DSzymborski]

CPU is a Ryzen 7 2700
There is no integrated graphics so it is a CPU.
I think it's highly unlikely two working PSU's would have the identical issue. I think I can rule out the PSU itself at this point, for all intents and purposes here.

Odd....the guy at the computer store spoke highly of the first junk PSU. But then I guess that's expected.

I have had OZ PSU's and a few others that might not be considered junk but I personally didn't find them superior in any way.
What would be your personal recomendation on a 600watt PSU ?
I guess I'd have to put them on an oscilloscope to actually see any differences.
The only thing that could make them better is the components inside....specifically the capacitors, mosfets and pcb design quality.

I happen to have several o-scopes, a Hitachi....and a hand held digital LED display unit.. maybe I'll do a comparison.
I may test the input side (AC) and the DC side (output) separately just to see the quality of the isolated parts of the PSU boards.
Should be interesting.

That's pretty much the case.

The cheaper PSUs tend to use lower-tier capacitors. You'll see a lot of lower tier capacitors and the capacitors will be largely rated at 85 rather than 105 degrees. You'll also find less efficient topologies, poorer voltage regulation, and more noise on the cheap PSUs. The Thermaltake is group-regulated and uses kinda dodgy ChengX capacitors. This is a big deal for many reasons, one of which is that PCs since 2000 (starting after the Pentium III CPUs) mainly care about +12V power and those group-regulated ones lead to nightmarish crossloads.

Cheap PSUs also have poorly configured (or outright missing) protections. On some of the dodgiest ones, you'll even find some real chicanery, such as faked certificates, completely missing safeties, and even parts painted to look real. In one instance I remember, the PSUs had a small brick inside. An actual brick, to make the PSU seem like it was better.

(Even a cheap Thermaltake isn't as bad as one of those, just cheap). We have a lot of people around here who tear apart these things and one of them has spent years as the director of R&D for Corsair (this is public, so I'm not outing anyone).

I guarantee you that a guy at a computer store these days couldn't tell an oscilloscope from a stethoscope.

 

[alceryes]

Run the mfg. health check on all your drives.
Go through at least one full pass of Memtest86.
Run Prime95 blended with all AVX off for at least 15 mins.

Anything show in the Windows logs?

 

[TrufflesG]

Run the mfg. health check on all your drives.
Go through at least one full pass of Memtest86.
Run Prime95 blended with all AVX off for at least 15 mins.

Anything show in the Windows logs?

Thanks.
I looked through the event logs up and down and found nothing that looked useful.

 

[TrufflesG]

Here is the LED Q codes from the user manual for this Motherboard....
All 4 lit up in sequence as expected and all went out as expected.
These LED's indicated no issues found with DRAM, CPU, GPU and booting devices.
Can these be trusted.

 

[TrufflesG]

Another line of thought......

Windows 10 is constantly updating. It never ends.

Is there a possibility that these random crashes could be a result of me NOT updating the motherboard firmware periodically?
Who has seen that happen and is it a concern?

 

[USAFRet]

Another line of thought......

Windows 10 is constantly updating. It never ends.

Is there a possibility that these random crashes could be a result of me NOT updating the motherboard firmware periodically?
Who has seen that happen and is it a concern?

Updates is not only a Win 10 thing.
That happens with every OS, ever.

For your motherboard....look at the manufacturers website for updates. Maybe one of them applies to your system, to fix some issue.

 

[TrufflesG]

I should emphasize that the computer still works fine.....until it crashes randomly.

I'm using it right now. It'll bop along just fine for some random time......15 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, 5 hours, 8 hours....but eventually it freezes up.

It seems totally random and unpredictable.

But it seems to boot back up afterwards every time and the cycle repeats.

 

[TrufflesG]

So, I've been using this machine now for about 10 hours without a single problem.

During that time I've used it to......

Listen to Music
Watch YouTube videos
Download files
Develop Coldfusion applications
Transfer files between computers
Plugged in and removed USB thumb drives
Read the news
Looked at the weather
Buy stuff online

Not a single problem or glitch.

I do not understand how it can be so random.
Tomorrow it may freeze or glitch constantly. Who knows.

 

[TrufflesG]

About 20 minutes after the post above, it crashed....again.
So I ran MemTest86.

What is more frustrating than a broken computer?
A broken computer that has problems that can't be found

 

[TrufflesG]

Run the mfg. health check on all your drives.
Go through at least one full pass of Memtest86.
Run Prime95 blended with all AVX off for at least 15 mins.

Anything show in the Windows logs?

 

[TrufflesG]

Looks like I've ruled out everything but the Motherboard.
And the Q LED indications for the Motherboard shows no errors.
Anyone else got any suggestions?

 

[alceryes]

Do you have any other HDDs or SSDs in your system? You should run the drive tools on every drive, not just your C drive.

I don't like the 78% lifetime remaining nor the 58 CRC error count. See if these numbers are slowly changing over a couple days of freezes. That drive is suspect.

 

[Karadjgne]

Your computer farted. That's a noise. There's only 2 things that'll make a noise, a dying component like a capacitor blowing or a moving part. If a cap dies, it's dead. There's no resurrection. That applies to any solid state component, it's a 1 shot deal, either good or bad. There's no in between.

Most common reason for farting noises is dust on a fan. When a fan starts to get a buildup of dust, it's all equitable across all the blades. The weight remains evenly distributed. But every now and then, a chunk of debris will fall off and that weight differential creates an imbalance on the bearings, the fan gets a wobble and results in a farting noise.

The other component that can make a farting noise is a mechanical drive, sometimes an optical with a restricted armature, but mostly it's a HDD where the grease is worn away from a motor or moving part and it tries to bind. If it does bind, the motor amperage goes way up trying to move it, which can trip psu protective circuitry and shuts the pc off instantly.

I'd do 2 things. First make sure all fans and heatsinks are clean and free of dust, especially the cpu and gpu. Second is monitor temps.

 

[TrufflesG]

Do you have any other HDDs or SSDs in your system? You should run the drive tools on every drive, not just your C drive.

I don't like the 78% lifetime remaining nor the 58 CRC error count. See if these numbers are slowly changing over a couple days of freezes. That drive is suspect.

Ok
Thanks.
I've used the drive non stop for 1.5 years so I thought 78% life remaining was about right?

I'll ask over at Crucial Tech support about the 58 CRC (Cyclical Redundancy Check) number.

 

[TrufflesG]

Your computer farted. That's a noise. There's only 2 things that'll make a noise, a dying component like a capacitor blowing or a moving part. If a cap dies, it's dead. There's no resurrection. That applies to any solid state component, it's a 1 shot deal, either good or bad. There's no in between.

Most common reason for farting noises is dust on a fan. When a fan starts to get a buildup of dust, it's all equitable across all the blades. The weight remains evenly distributed. But every now and then, a chunk of debris will fall off and that weight differential creates an imbalance on the bearings, the fan gets a wobble and results in a farting noise.

The other component that can make a farting noise is a mechanical drive, sometimes an optical with a restricted armature, but mostly it's a HDD where the grease is worn away from a motor or moving part and it tries to bind. If it does bind, the motor amperage goes way up trying to move it, which can trip psu protective circuitry and shuts the pc off instantly.

I'd do 2 things. First make sure all fans and heatsinks are clean and free of dust, especially the cpu and gpu. Second is monitor temps.

Unless I'm mistaken, the noise actually came from the speakers, so it was through the audio, which is integrated.
The audio still works find. In fact, the computer seems perfectly normal for about 8 hours, then it randomly reboots.

There was not enough dust in the unit to cause an imbalance but I know what you mean. I've seen the inside of PCs that def had enough dust to do that.
I've even found mouse droppings, spiders and roaches in computers when I used to do computer repairs for a living long ago.

All good stuff you posted there. Thanks again.