Faulty PSU?

[Karlof]

Hi guys,


I recently (Late July 2011) built a computer, which had seemed to be working fine until about three weeks ago, when it started shutting down and rebooting automatically. The Windows event viewer always tells me it's the same error: Critical Event ID 41 (The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.). About 20 minutes ago I powered up the system and it didn't even POST, the fans and LED would just power up like a normal boot-up, but then turn off and go back into this loop until I manually turned off the PSU.


Is my PSU done? At this point I do not see what else could be the problem. The shut-downs occur at very random times: sometimes while the computer has been idle, sometimes while gaming, sometimes (like 20 mins ago) I was booting it after a long (6 hours) turned-off period. I checked my CPU, motherboard and GPU temps and they all seem to be okay.

The only other thing I could see is electric current in my building, as I do not have a UPS and was not really planning on purchasing one in the short-term. Is it possible that spotty electric current is causing these problems?

Is there a way to check if it is indeed the PSU that's at fault here? Seeing as how I bought it just two months ago and it's a great unit according to many reviewers I actually am a bit surprised that it would fail so quickly. None of my parts are overclocked, it's all still on stock clocks.


Here are my specs:


CM|RC-692-KKN2 ADVANCED RT
MB MSI|P67A-G45 (B3) P67 LGA1155 R
PSU SEASONIC| X650 GOLD SS-650KM R
CPU INTEL|CORE I5 2500K 3.3G 6M R
MNTR ASUS|LCD 24" 2MS VW246H HDMI R
DVD BRN ASUS | DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS%
MS WIN 7 HOME SP1 64BIT 1PK - OEM
CPU COOLER CM| RR-B10-212P-G1 RT
VGA XFX|HD-687A-ZNFC HD6870 R
SSD 128G|CRUCIAL CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1
MEM 4Gx2|GSKILL F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL
HD 2T|HITACHI HDS5C3020ALA632 %
FAN COOLERMASTER|R4-L2S-122B-GP R



Any input is appreciated, thanks!

 

[Profumo]

By the way you describe it your best bet is a faulty PSU, you can check that using a multimeter to read the voltages or using a different PSU to test the system with.

The X650 is an excellent PSU, but independent of how good or bad a unit or a platform is, every single PSU line will have some bad samples(you were simply unlucky to get one of them), due to a slip in QC or simply due to the fact that it went half way across the globe before ending up in your system, being loaded and unloaded more than a few times

 

[Tsumi]

The power up loop to me seems more indicative of a motherboard, RAM, or CPU problem. No way to definitively tell you, only way is to manually swap out components.

 

[Karlof]

Thanks for the input guys, really appreciate it. I also failed to mention something else: immediately after automatically booting up after a power loss, I will (sometimes, not always) hear a loud noise, which I suspect is the PSU fan powering on. Could it be that the PSU is working at full capacity for a few seconds during boot-up because it is failing to draw sufficient power? It seems to me that it would be weird for the GPU or CPU fan to get excited as my temps are entirely normal.

 

[Tsumi]

What you suspect and what it really is can be entirely two different things. Take the side panel off, and see if you can find out what is spinning up when you start it. Typically, most GPU's spin their fan up to full during bootup, and motherboards also sometimes do this.

Power cycling in my experience has mostly been due to a faulty motherboard.

Another personal experience with random shutdowns was a connection loose in the motherboard connector. The green wire pin thing was loose, and sometimes vibrations would cause it to temporarily disconnect, shutting off the power supply. A pair of pliers and a bit of squeezing solved this problem.