Power Supply Issue? Enermax Liberty 620watt

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civic00typer

Gawd
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
517
Maybe a power supply issue here... I just wanted to get some opinions before I start trail and error troubleshooting. My media center consists of 12HD's, Asus P5B Deluxe, Core 2 E6300, Crucial Ballistix 2GB Kit (DDR2-800), Enermax Liberty 620-watt PSU, and a Highpoint RAID controller. After a week or so of up-time the computer starts to have memory issues. Windows will blue-screen, and these memory issues have been verified by Memtest86. Once the computer is powered off it will not POST again. I cleared the BIOS, unplugged the MOBO, removed the battery, and removed the CPU. Typically I end up letting the computer sit there disassembled because I have very little time in my schedule for troubleshooting. When I get attempt to power the computer up after some downtime it will POST and have no memory issues. I actually took the RAM and put it in my other Core2 rig and tested it for 30+ hours with Memtest86, no errors found. I then proceeded to test the power supply. I used a power supply tester, and use the 24-pin, and the 8-pin aux plug. When I have anything else plugged into the power supply while using the tester, it will cycle on and off making a clicking noise. Is this typical? I can't decide where to start... either the motherboard or the PSU. I hate intermittent problems.
 
Well the 620 has 44amps on 12V ( +12V1@22A, +12V2@22A ). So the HD's are only consuming 36 of the available 44... I had this power supply powering these drives for over a year, and recently went from amd 3800x2 to the core 2 duo setup... Hmm... motherboard issue? Next time I will check the voltages when the system becomes unstable... maybe that will provide a clue.
 
You do not add rails together to get the combined amperage. Look for the combined wattage, and that is the actual combined amperage. For the liberty, that's 36a
 
Well why would the system run fine for a week if the drives were drawing too much amperage during spin-up? If the system is booted after being off overnight it will post, and the memory sub-system will be error-free. Furthermore how do I stagger the spin-up?
 
civic00typer said:
Well why would the system run fine for a week if the drives were drawing too much amperage during spin-up? If the system is booted after being off overnight it will post, and the memory sub-system will be error-free. Furthermore how do I stagger the spin-up?
Click to expand...
You need a HDD controller with this function.

As to why, who knows, however a high-quality PSU can take a lot of abuse, but not forever.

The memory sub-system uses only the +3.3V rail.
 
Seeing how the memory subsystem uses +3V ... the 12V rails can't be causing the problem. Which should rule out the hard drives. Furthermore my RAID controller does have support for staggered spin-up.... however it will not allow me to enable it. Does the hard drives themselves need to support staggered spin-up?
 
civic00typer said:
Seeing how the memory subsystem uses +3V ... the 12V rails can't be causing the problem. Which should rule out the hard drives. Furthermore my RAID controller does have support for staggered spin-up.... however it will not allow me to enable it. Does the hard drives themselves need to support staggered spin-up?
Click to expand...

Not exactly true, it's the same PSU, if you overload it you can bog down all of the rails. The 3V rail connects to the same output and just gets stepped down to 3V. I doubt the HD's need to support staggered spin-up, they are dumb drives. Try disconnecting a few drives and see if things improve. As for how stagger, you could put a switch on the front that interrupts power to a few drives. Flip that off, boot the computer, than flip it on after 30 seconds.

Out of curiousity, why do you have 12 HD's in your media center?
 
I have 12 HD's for PVR functionality. Maybe I need to create a new post for this: The computer has been up and running for the last 2 days, no memory problems or stability issues. I decided to power down and try the power supply tester. I unplugged everything from the power supply and plugged the 24pin and 8pin aux to the power supply tester. The 3.3, 5, and 12 were all within spec. I powered down and plugged in the video card (no power drain because the motherboard connector was plugged into the tester. Same results once I ran the tester again. So then I decided to plug one bank of the HD's in... (4 HD's) and the turned the power supply back on... the power supply was making a clicking noise (like a relay) and turning off and on according to the power supply tester. This seems odd to me, maybe a power issue? Finally I plugged everything into the power supply on one rail (just wanted to see what happened if I overloaded a rail) the system booted perfectly. I am in windows right now (stable) writing this post. I am thinking about stressing the array, video card, and cpu. My idle temps are around 39cpu/35mobo.
 
Given that one +12V rail exclusivly powers the CPU via the P4 connector,
how did you hook everything up to one rail?
 
Well I assume the rails were split between the top and bottom of the power supply (like the pci-e conenctors). I don't think they would put two pci-e connectors on the same rail... right?
 
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