Hi, everyone. I'd like to ask the community at large a few questions regarding some hardware issues I've been having that I think might be related to my power supply, but I want to make sure before I invest in a new one.
OK, so the problems have been happening very infrequently for about a year or so now: I'd randomly get a blue screen (Windows 7 64-bit) with a stop code 0x0000007E or 0x0000001E. I'd restart and everything would be fine after that. When it got a bit more frequent around mid 2011, I wrote it off as driver issues, reformatted my PC and then it ran fine, until last week.
So these blue screens with the same stop codes as above, including new ones like BAD_POOL_HEADER and, more frequently, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL kept coming up, even on start-up, before I could log into Windows. Along with that, I had noticed the week before the crashing started that my external sound card was cutting out for about a second and then slowly faded back in. This would happen about once every 2 minutes or so. Sometimes it would even cut out for about 10 seconds at a time, then come back with a slight static sound that builds to a deafening WHOOSH to finally fade back into the original sound output. Given some of the stop codes above, I did some googling and some of them pointed to memory errors. Before the format, I ran MemTest to see if there were any RAM issues, but they all checked out.
I was kinda stumped on the sound card's behavior, but I still thought a format would help. And for a while, it did. Even though the start-up cycles were kind of laborious and strange (Turn PC on, POST doesn't kick in. Turn PC off, post works, loads Windows, b ut graphics acceleration is disabled. Restart PC, works fine now. I think this should have been my first indication of an aging PSU.). But one day after the format, while I was playing games, the sound kept cutting out, and I got a blue screen again. Stop code 0x0000007E and the file dxgmms1.sys was given. So, I figured it must again be related to the graphics card, but it's about a year and a bit old, so it's way too young to start causing problems now already. I keep telling myself it would either have worked fine for a few years, or it would have stop working earlier because of a defect. Then I started thinking that it might be my power supply.
I summed it up as:
- The PC was been working fine for well over 5 years now, so under-powering was not a problem.
- The bad start-up procedure can be because of a bad power supply.
- The sound card's constant cutting out can be because of an under-powered card.
- the GPU-related blue screens can be because of an under-powered card.
Is my reasoning flawed, or is there something I missed?
My PC's pretty old (constructed June 2007), and I use it mostly for gaming. The power supply itself has been around for the whole time.
Specs:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, not overclocked.
- RAM: 4GB DDR 2 800MHz
- HDD: 3.5 TB distributed over 2 standard 7200RPM SATA drives and 1 'green' drive (WD Caviar Green 2TB)
- MOtherbaord: Asus P5N32-e SLI
- Graphics card:
XFX Nvidia GeForece 8800 Ultra, up until +- Feb 2011.
Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 570 (it was on special). Just over a year in use.
- PSU: Cooler Master iGreen Power 600W
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate
I would really appreciate any help on the subject. I don't want to fork out for a new PSU until I'm sure that it's at the root of the problem.
OK, so the problems have been happening very infrequently for about a year or so now: I'd randomly get a blue screen (Windows 7 64-bit) with a stop code 0x0000007E or 0x0000001E. I'd restart and everything would be fine after that. When it got a bit more frequent around mid 2011, I wrote it off as driver issues, reformatted my PC and then it ran fine, until last week.
So these blue screens with the same stop codes as above, including new ones like BAD_POOL_HEADER and, more frequently, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL kept coming up, even on start-up, before I could log into Windows. Along with that, I had noticed the week before the crashing started that my external sound card was cutting out for about a second and then slowly faded back in. This would happen about once every 2 minutes or so. Sometimes it would even cut out for about 10 seconds at a time, then come back with a slight static sound that builds to a deafening WHOOSH to finally fade back into the original sound output. Given some of the stop codes above, I did some googling and some of them pointed to memory errors. Before the format, I ran MemTest to see if there were any RAM issues, but they all checked out.
I was kinda stumped on the sound card's behavior, but I still thought a format would help. And for a while, it did. Even though the start-up cycles were kind of laborious and strange (Turn PC on, POST doesn't kick in. Turn PC off, post works, loads Windows, b ut graphics acceleration is disabled. Restart PC, works fine now. I think this should have been my first indication of an aging PSU.). But one day after the format, while I was playing games, the sound kept cutting out, and I got a blue screen again. Stop code 0x0000007E and the file dxgmms1.sys was given. So, I figured it must again be related to the graphics card, but it's about a year and a bit old, so it's way too young to start causing problems now already. I keep telling myself it would either have worked fine for a few years, or it would have stop working earlier because of a defect. Then I started thinking that it might be my power supply.
I summed it up as:
- The PC was been working fine for well over 5 years now, so under-powering was not a problem.
- The bad start-up procedure can be because of a bad power supply.
- The sound card's constant cutting out can be because of an under-powered card.
- the GPU-related blue screens can be because of an under-powered card.
Is my reasoning flawed, or is there something I missed?
My PC's pretty old (constructed June 2007), and I use it mostly for gaming. The power supply itself has been around for the whole time.
Specs:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, not overclocked.
- RAM: 4GB DDR 2 800MHz
- HDD: 3.5 TB distributed over 2 standard 7200RPM SATA drives and 1 'green' drive (WD Caviar Green 2TB)
- MOtherbaord: Asus P5N32-e SLI
- Graphics card:
XFX Nvidia GeForece 8800 Ultra, up until +- Feb 2011.
Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 570 (it was on special). Just over a year in use.
- PSU: Cooler Master iGreen Power 600W
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate
I would really appreciate any help on the subject. I don't want to fork out for a new PSU until I'm sure that it's at the root of the problem.
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