Question Power Up / Boot issues, is it my Power Supply

[djsniperwolf]

I have an older MSI ge73 rgb 8rf

quick back story:

It was my work horse, and was pretty reliable. The battery died early on. Cells still measure 11.4V but the BMS shows zero. Ok no problem, I am always on AC anyways.

Ran battery-less for about 2 years, when i suddenly started getting hard reboots. System would shut off, then come back on. it wasnt an often enough occurrence to cause much concern.

Slowly, the restarts became more constant, and I remember the event viewer saying something about Power. By then I just packed it away until I had more time.

Today:

The system turns on, shows the MSI startup logo, and would just hard restart. Sometimes it’d load a bit further, sometimes it was quick to shut off and back on again. If I am fast enough, I can get into the BIOS settings, and it doesnt seem to crash here.

I am assuming it relates to my power issues in some way? I dont want to waste money on another power supply unless I can confirm it to be bad.

I measured the voltage on the DC end of the power brick, and I am getting about 17.8-17.9V on a 19.5V rated brick. This is measured with no load. Just probing the charger on its own.

The fact that it is even showing a 17V reading leads me to believe that it is not supplying enough power anymore.

Would that low of a voltage be whats been causing my instability, and now just down right inability to boot-up? Or could it be something more major?

 

[Lutfij]

Slowly, the restarts became more constant, and I remember the event viewer saying something about Power. By then I just packed it away until I had more time.
That might be an indication of your power delivery area of your motherboard having trouble or you're suffering from a grounding issue. You might want to disconnect from the wall, then disassemble the laptop, remove the stick(s) of ram, then press and hold down the power button for 30secs. Use an eraser to wipe the gold fingers on the stick(s) of ram, make sure there aren't any eraser lint and then reseat the ram in their respective slot(s).

I measured the voltage on the DC end of the power brick, and I am getting about 17.8-17.9V on a 19.5V rated brick. This is measured with no load. Just probing the charger on its own.
Yeap, I would source a replacement power brick for the laptop, asap.