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Bad power causing restarts?

B

Bop

2[H]4U
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Oct 1, 2003
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I recently upgraded to a more power hungry PC and every once in awhile while I'm playing a game the PC will restart. There is no BSOD or error message. I used the same power supply in my last PC with no problems.

I am convinced it is the outside power.

Just by turning my PC on the line voltage drops about 10v, and I think at around full load it drops another 5-10v. The PC hasn't caused me any problems yet at my parent's place.

The apartment I live in was made in the 40s so I'm assuming its poor wiring. Do I have a legitimate complaint to call up my landlord to do something about it? The microwave also cooks poorly as well when the voltage drops.

I have a line conditioner back at my parent's place and I may order a UPS with AVR... will that help as a stop-gap solution?
 
Bop said:
The apartment I live in was made in the 40s so I'm assuming its poor wiring. Do I have a legitimate complaint to call up my landlord to do something about it? The microwave also cooks poorly as well when the voltage drops.
Click to expand...
Any issues with the residence itself would be grounds for a legitimate complaint to the landlord, assuming your rent arrangement means that he is responsible for maintenance of the property.
 
I am resurrecting a dead thread here as the problem intermittently occurred even at my parents place; I had just given up but now I want to solve it. The line conditioner I have ups the voltage to 120V but allows it to dip to 110V before kicking in.

I can run a Prime95 stress test for hours and hours; it seems to only occur when the video card(s) is running such as gaming.

It doesn't seem like an outside issue if the power stays at 110-120V.

I am tempted to jump up to a 1000W PSU... the only other thing I can think of is a mobo issue but the issue only occurs while gaming. General stress testing of the CPU and RAM are fine.
 
To see if it's a power problem, try backing your CPU down to stock speeds and possibly lowering your GPU clock speeds. If you don't see any more crashes, then you might be overloading the PSU (although I doubt it, since 850W should be plenty for your rig). If you still have problems, then the issue is something else.
 
What power supply and video card are you using? This could just as easily be a bad card as opposed to lack of power. I have seen a bad card crash, even downclocked and with a box fan blowing on it.
 
I'll leave Prime and 3dMark running overnight and see if that can get things to trip. Battlefield 2 has been crashing to the desktop frequently as well... which just confuses me. Usually if a system is P95 stable this shouldn't happen.

I'll report back with the stock experiment. Maybe even remove one of the video cards.
 
Try it first with both cards and everything at stock, since it could conceivably be an issue with SLI as well.
 
Before I start the test, I want to throw in that the PC actually shuts off and then kicks back on instantly.
 
I finally had a chance to run it overnight. The PC hard froze last night during the Prime95/3D Mark 2k5 loop. However this was at 3.8ghz with a single GTX 285. Stock will be tested tonight hopefully.

EDIT: I was able to obtain an Enermax Revo 1050W from a friend, now I can say it is not a PSU issue. The PC hard froze last night when I attempted to run 3.8ghz with SLi. I have a feeling this may a GPU issue so I'll see what happens with the CPU at stock.

Update: The system ran over 15 hours and did not freeze/reboot with the CPU at stock. I'm going to raise the bclock to 200 and lower the multi to stock CPU speeds to see if this is a mobo/RAM issue.
 
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Ok, I have deduced that it is the memory as long as the system holds out for just a little longer. (It is running a test now)

Test 1:
3800mhz (19x200)
1600mhz RAM
= Failure

Test 2:
2800mhz (stock w/ Turbo) 21x133
1066mhz RAM
= Pass

Test 3:
2800mhz 14x200 and 21x133
1600mhz RAM
=Failure

Test 4:
3800mhz 19x200
1200mhz RAM
= 8 hours in and fine, letting it run for another 8

EDIT: Solved. It was the uncore frequency. It was set to an appropriate value (16x, 2x DRAM frequency) but maybe it dipped a few too many mhz due to my board having a clock generated value off by .2 somewhere. Setting it to 17X fixed it.
 
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