Hi all, I know my way around a PC but when it comes to diagnosing issues, I’m a bit helpless. The issue at hand is: I have a PC which posts and boots to windows and at any random point, the PC will completely lock up (nothing works, not even the physical reset button on the PC or Ctrl + Alt + Del) and a hard shutdown is required (by holding the power button or flipping the switch on the PSU). To put this into a bit of context, this was my partners PC which stopped being used about 6 months ago. In that time, I swapped out a few parts (fans, SSD, etc.) to use in a different build. That other build is now completely scrap. (second hand Chinese PSU shorted and burnt out everything in the process. I know, I cheeped out big time.)
Anyhow, I hooked everything up in my partner’s build (everything was working as far as I can remember) to use as my own and upon booting to windows, the above mentions issue occurs (No BSOD, no black screen, just freezes). Now, just a few things to note. Firstly, the PC will freeze at any time, whether it’s under load or not, temps looks to be normal, and no weird processes that I can see running. I haven’t even been able to install games yet. I have benched the PC and although the system does crash during normal use, it has not crashed in the 2 times I have benched it (CPU temp reaches ~49 degrees).
I did notice something very strange though:
I had hooked my AIO pump to the ‘CPU_FAN’ header and the radiator fan to the ‘SYS_FAN2’ header and left the MB fan speeds as default. The first crash happened with these default settings within 10 mins of the PC booting. I then checked the fan settings in the BIOS and noticed the pump was set to gradually increase speed with temp/workload. Although it would have made much difference anyway, I switched the AIO pump to the SYS_FAN2 header and the radiator fan to the CPU_FAN header. I then went through bios and set the pump to increase speed from 80% gradually to 100% with temp/workload and left radiator fan as CPU defaults. To my surprise, the PC didn’t freeze instantly on boot. I left the PC to download fortnite overnight and woke up to find the PC had frozen again, but with ~6 hours of up-time. This was a lot more than my initial 10 mins of up-time.
Upon some further research, I found my pump is rated at 2.4Amps while the motherboard fan headers are rated to a maximum of 2.0Amps. But even in this case, it doesn’t make much sense as the PC was freezing more often when the pump was set to 30% power with gradual increase. If the CPU pump was overloading the MB, the crashes should happen more often when the pump is set to high, not low power. I know this has something to do with the AIO cooler, I’m just not sure what it is/how to fix it. Also, would an over-current even cause the type of crash that I’m seeing? I would expect a full system shutdown if there was power issues? I’m almost certain it’s a power issue relating to the pump/fans. Let me know what you all think.
PC Specs:
CPU: i7-7700 3.6GHz (Turbo to 4.2GHz) SR3383 (Non K)
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 (No OC)
RAM: 4 x 4GB SkHynix 2133p (Non-ECC)(No OC)
MB: Gigabyte GA-H270-HD3
PSU: Antec HCG-620 (80plus Bronze 620W (non-modular), 12V rail @ 48A & 576W)
Boot Device: Samsung 860 EVO 250GB m.2 SSD (5 Hours ‘ON’ time)
CPU Cooler: Asetek 550LC AIO (Corsair equivalent would be the Hydro H55 I guess?)
Fans: 3 x 120mm Fans (1 x Radiator Exhaust, 1 x Case Exhaust and 1 x Case Intake)
OS: Windows 10 x64 (Build 1809)
Anyhow, I hooked everything up in my partner’s build (everything was working as far as I can remember) to use as my own and upon booting to windows, the above mentions issue occurs (No BSOD, no black screen, just freezes). Now, just a few things to note. Firstly, the PC will freeze at any time, whether it’s under load or not, temps looks to be normal, and no weird processes that I can see running. I haven’t even been able to install games yet. I have benched the PC and although the system does crash during normal use, it has not crashed in the 2 times I have benched it (CPU temp reaches ~49 degrees).
I did notice something very strange though:
I had hooked my AIO pump to the ‘CPU_FAN’ header and the radiator fan to the ‘SYS_FAN2’ header and left the MB fan speeds as default. The first crash happened with these default settings within 10 mins of the PC booting. I then checked the fan settings in the BIOS and noticed the pump was set to gradually increase speed with temp/workload. Although it would have made much difference anyway, I switched the AIO pump to the SYS_FAN2 header and the radiator fan to the CPU_FAN header. I then went through bios and set the pump to increase speed from 80% gradually to 100% with temp/workload and left radiator fan as CPU defaults. To my surprise, the PC didn’t freeze instantly on boot. I left the PC to download fortnite overnight and woke up to find the PC had frozen again, but with ~6 hours of up-time. This was a lot more than my initial 10 mins of up-time.
Upon some further research, I found my pump is rated at 2.4Amps while the motherboard fan headers are rated to a maximum of 2.0Amps. But even in this case, it doesn’t make much sense as the PC was freezing more often when the pump was set to 30% power with gradual increase. If the CPU pump was overloading the MB, the crashes should happen more often when the pump is set to high, not low power. I know this has something to do with the AIO cooler, I’m just not sure what it is/how to fix it. Also, would an over-current even cause the type of crash that I’m seeing? I would expect a full system shutdown if there was power issues? I’m almost certain it’s a power issue relating to the pump/fans. Let me know what you all think.
PC Specs:
CPU: i7-7700 3.6GHz (Turbo to 4.2GHz) SR3383 (Non K)
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 (No OC)
RAM: 4 x 4GB SkHynix 2133p (Non-ECC)(No OC)
MB: Gigabyte GA-H270-HD3
PSU: Antec HCG-620 (80plus Bronze 620W (non-modular), 12V rail @ 48A & 576W)
Boot Device: Samsung 860 EVO 250GB m.2 SSD (5 Hours ‘ON’ time)
CPU Cooler: Asetek 550LC AIO (Corsair equivalent would be the Hydro H55 I guess?)
Fans: 3 x 120mm Fans (1 x Radiator Exhaust, 1 x Case Exhaust and 1 x Case Intake)
OS: Windows 10 x64 (Build 1809)