Can a PSU cause such freezes?

T

tedych

Limp Gawd
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Jan 18, 2013
Messages
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My current system is one year old. Up until the last week it was powered by CoolerMaster B700. It was a 5-year old PSU I bought back in the day when my previous PSU died and I was in a hurry.
For the one year life of my system I had two freezes, one in BIOS/UEFI when I was fiddling with fans settings (few months ago) and 10 days ago when I was just writing something in Firefox (computer was idle). Total freeze, image frozen, nothing reacts.

Is it possible that the Cooler Master PSU caused these?

Some thoughts that might be helpful. I had my doubts about this B700 from day one (that's why I finally replaced it with new one). Now when I researched more, it turns out this PSU was total crap. In my old system (AM2) voltages were 12.6 and 5.26V. On the edge or beyond the specs but it worked Ok.
On my current system voltages are 5.3V and 12.5V (idle), I guess the older system used more of 5V.
After testing the CM PSU standalone outside (with a wire between green and black) with 35W lamp, strange things happened (compared to another one spare I had, FSP). After I load the 12V line with the lamp, it shows 12.4V and 5.3V. When I disconnect the lamp (but a test fan stays connected) the 12V line becomes 13.4V for 1 to 4 seconds and then drops to 12.3.
This (these) isn't observed with the other PSU I tested.
Plus the fact this PSU is crap, I want to avoid the dangerous BIOS update if I can, because the PC works fine otherwise. My BIOS is from October 2017.
So, is it possible this PSU caused those freezes, for example a temporary higher voltage could have caused some component to cause the freeze.....?
Thanks.
 
If it really is putting out 13.4V it could cause harm, especially if overclocking.
i wouldnt use it.

+12V max tolerance is 5% giving 12.6V.
13.4V is +11.7% voltage.

Power is proportional to voltage squared.
Call 12V 100% power.
The max +5% tolerance is capable of delivering +10.25% power.
13.4V is capable of feeding almost +25% power to everything on the 12V rail that doesnt have regulation, potentially causing damage.
Regulation circuits such as VRMs could suffer damage too.
 
Yeah. Sure, I measured those voltages in a testbed outside the PC with one lamp and one fan but still, one or both voltages are/were outside the specs and tolerances when in the old and current configuration. And the 2-3-4 sec when the PSU keeps 13.4 when I disconnect the powerful lamp from 12V rail (loaded with one fan). Also, with one fan on the 12V and the lamp connected to 5V rail, the 12V raises to 13.1 and stays there indefinitely until I remove the lamp. I think the PSU had bad voltage regulations.
Anyway I may risk and update BIOS.
Thanks.

Edit: Well, I updated my UEFI BIOS with the latest and I'm happy so far. Now it can run my memory at its rated frequency out of the box whereas before it couldn't and then I had to manually tune memory settings. Although it was (and still is now) stable on memtest for hours.
 
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