Power Supply slowly dying?

jhatfie

jhatfie

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 19, 2003
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Recently my gaming computer has come to a screeching halt under extended heavy load at random times. No blue screen, nothing weird prior to, just a complete and instant shut down for no reason. In the past couple days it has done it 3 times when gaming. Looking at the system logs, it seems to indicate that there was a power fault.

My house is cooled, so my temperature is pretty consistant year round so I do not think it is extra heat coming into play. I checked my motherboard and did not see any leaking or bulging capacitors.

I am plugged into a 1000va battery backup so the power should be clean coming into the PSU.

My system is in my sig, so a Antec TP New 750W powering a i5-750 OC'd to 4Ghz, 8GB ram and unlocked 6950's in crossfire. I have had the Antec for close to two years now and my computer gets lots of use, so is it maybe just degrading and can no longer produce as much power?
 
Antec makes a great product but stuff happens. Why don't you call their tech support people and see what they say?

What voltage is the bios reporting for the 3.3v, 5v, and 12v rails? They should be +/-5% of those #'s. If they are then its the psu more than likely.
 
Volatages look fine in bios, I do not see any weird fluctuation.

Under normal use my computer is fine. It seems to power off after a hour + of gaming. On paper, it should not have crumble powering my system, but I bet with essentially dual 6970's w/ +20% power control it is loading the PSU pretty good.

I may decide to pick up another power supply and see if the condition is repeatable. If not, then I'll have my answer and if yes, then there must be another problem.
 
don't plug in to your ups try going right in to the wall, i was having wired stuff happening to my pc and thought it was my psu but it was my ups going bad and under full load the thing would cut power for a sec then come back on so i tried pulging right in to the wall and all was fine
 
Yeah, it could be your UPS overloading. A 1000VA UPS could only be 400W of delivered power. A modern gaming system with 750W power supply could easily cause the UPS to overload and shutdown everything.
 
I plugged it straight into the wall as suggested and my computer shut off again after about 45 minutes of gaming. Ideas?
 
jhatfie said:
I plugged it straight into the wall as suggested and my computer shut off again after about 45 minutes of gaming. Ideas?
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Remove the case side panel, and have a table fan blow into it because if that helps, it's likely the PSU is probably dirty or bad. You can blow it out with a vacuum cleaner or canned air, but do that only with the AC power cord removed (not just the AC switched off), and don't stick any metal in there. Fans that start binding need to be either replaced or taken apart and cleaned.

PSUs decrease in power capacity as they get hotter, and PC Power & Cooling said one unnamed model at room temperature lost 1/3 capacity at 40C, 1/2 capacity at 50C.
 
Looking at the system logs, it seems to indicate that there was a power fault.
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The system can not log this. How can it write anything in the log when the power goes out instantly? Most likely when you booted the system it logged that there was an unexpected shutdown that could have been caused by power loss. Meaning that the OS is guessing why the system instantly shutdown.

In the past (at work) I have seen a bad motherboard (VRMs) cause this. Although it could be a powersupply. The best way to test is to use a different supply and see if the problem still occurs.
 
it sounds like a heat issue. After playing for some time the heat given off by those 6950's is raising the case and the psu temp. If its over 40c for a long time the psu will no longer output the proper voltage and shutdown. What are your case temps after gaming for say 20-30 mins? Do you have hardware monitor?
 
drescherjm said:
The system can not log this. How can it write anything in the log when the power goes out instantly? Most likely when you booted the system it logged that there was an unexpected shutdown that could have been caused by power loss. Meaning that the OS is guessing why the system instantly shutdown.

In the past (at work) I have seen a bad motherboard (VRMs) cause this. Although it could be a powersupply. The best way to test is to use a different supply and see if the problem still occurs.
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Here is the error in the system log states, it is vague and also indicates it could be a regular crash:
Critical 6/30/2011 9:25:22 PM Kernel-Power 41 (63)
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

hossdaddy - Not sure what the internal temperature of my case is, it is a CoolerMaster Storm Sniper so it is really well ventilated. I am using a Thermalright Silver Arrow for cooling my cpu. After a hour or so I do see my System temp on my hardware monitor creep up to the 65C range however. CPU is low at around 40C under load while gaming. There is a ton of heat getting dispersed though, it can be easily felt radiating from the area my computer resides.

Since I do not have a spare PSU with adequate power, I ordered up a LEPA G900-MA 900W which is essentially a ENERMAX MODU87+ EMG900EWT, but minus the Enermax premium at only $129 (sale price at Newegg). Figure I will see how the system does with a new Power Supply.
 
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look at the north & south bridge temps to give you an idea of the ambient case temp. Or if you have a regular thermometer just place it in the case and close it and monitor.
 
Critical 6/30/2011 9:25:22 PM Kernel-Power 41 (63)
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
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This means the OS has no idea why the system shut down.
 
Received the Lepa G900-MA a couple days ago (really like it). Installed it and so far, after a few long gaming sessions, no shut downs. I'll update if I have any further issues.
 
jhatfie, that antec psu should be under warranty I hope you plan on rma'ing it?
 
hossdaddy said:
jhatfie, that antec psu should be under warranty I hope you plan on rma'ing it?
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Yeah I have a request into Antec to potentially RMA my unit. It is not a complete failure so I am not sure how they will handle it.
 
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