• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

EVGA SuperNOVA 850; Bad PSU?

M

MGV001

n00b
Joined
Jun 29, 2011
Messages
41
Hello everyone. I have been experiencing relatively random power loss. The system posts fine and boots to windows 10 fine and then at random times I get a millisecond power loss where the system turns off and then reboots. Very fast. Like a click, I can hear the relay (I think) tripping and it is already rebooting before I can even look down to the tower.

So, on to the testing: removed the secondary mechanical drive and the blu ray drive so only the SSD (with OS) is connected. Still shuts down. Then tried different configurations of the RAM modules (2 sticks, 4 slots). Still randomly shuts down. Removed all sticks and the board posts.

So, eyed the graphics card (EVGA 980 GTX). I took it out because the system is a Skylake i7 (so it has the intel 530 onboard graphics), and, lo and behold, the system seems stable.

That lead me to believe that I had a problem with either the graphics card, the power supply or the motherboard. Tried a different graphics card (old 580 GTX) and same problem - shuts down.

Just for grins and giggles, I tried a different PCIE slot. Same problem with both the 980 and the 580. Because it happens with both cards, I do not think that BOTH cards are bad and because it happens in BOTH slots, I do not think the MB is bad.

I am thinking that the PSU is bad. Any other tests I can do? Any thoughts?

My system:
Skylake i7 6700 stock
ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Ranger Z170
EVGA GTX 980
EVGA SuperNOVA 850 P2 (power supply)
16GB G.Skill Ripjaws (2 x 8GB)

No overclock.

Running Unigine 4.0, it cannot get through a single benchmark with either the 980 or 580 in either of the PCIE slots. Running the same benchmark with the onboard 530, it never shuts down (painfully slow, obviously, but it never shuts down).

Am I correct to now focus on the PSU?

Thank you for your help.
 
The motherboard is what sends the signal to the PSU to stay on, so testing the cards in both slots is not an indication the motherboard is fine. It can be the power draw of the card causes some funky things to happen on the motherboard. Usually in cases like this I'm more inclined to suspect the motherboard, but there is no definite way to tell until you start swapping suspected problem units with known good ones.
 
Tsumi said:
The motherboard is what sends the signal to the PSU to stay on, so testing the cards in both slots is not an indication the motherboard is fine. It can be the power draw of the card causes some funky things to happen on the motherboard. Usually in cases like this I'm more inclined to suspect the motherboard, but there is no definite way to tell until you start swapping suspected problem units with known good ones.
Click to expand...


Thank you for your help, Tsumi. I am hoping it is not a motherboard problem.

I will swap the PSU and report back (I still have the older one from my prior build around here somewhere).
 
Did you run any diagnostics software to check your voltages? Hwinfo, aida, aisuite?
 
I did check the voltages and never saw anything out of the ordinary. The system seemed perfectly fine until a sudden power loss for the whole system and then just that quick, it would begin to restart.

I hooked up an older PSU and everything ran stable. Played some games and ran Unigine for multiple hours and no power loss.

Called EVGA and explained what is going on and they sent me a new PSU as mine was under warranty. Everything seems to be working just fine now.

(of course, now that I post this, I am probably jinxing myself).
 
I will add this: EVGA has been an absolute pleasure to deal with on this. Sure, it stinks that the PSU went bad (at least, that appears to be the problem thus far - keeping fingers crossed), but it was very easy to get in touch with a live person and no real run-around.
 
And that is a big reason why people recommend EVGA. You can have the best product in the world, but without good customer support you won't build a solid base of consumers.

EVGA understands this well. Corsair does as well. Wish I can say the same for Asus.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top