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STUMPED...possibly bad eletricity? How to test?

D

DogChainX

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 8, 2004
Messages
2,037
Story: A little over a year and a half ago I built a high-end workstation for a relative (extended family, you don't need the details).

EVGA x58 SLI
12GB DDR3
i7 920 3.6GHz
120GB SSD
H50
PC Power & Cooling 1000 watt PSU

This system was rock-solid for a week of my burn-in torture tests (Prime, Intel Burnin, etc..)
I tested this at my work, and my home. It was, in all essence, a kick-ass system. However, it was horrifically unstable for my relative. It would lock up, and reboot spontaneously. I couldn't grab any log information on what was causing it. I had him pull RAM modules, down clock, BIOS upgrades/downgrades/clearing CMOS, etc. NOTHING solved the problem.

So last week I sent him down a completely new build, but with a 650watt PSU, and an ASUS x58 mobo. It was ROCK solid for me for a week straight of using it at home. However, when he uses it at his home it exhibits the same odd behavior as the system above.

I'm not sure what to do now. Do I have him have an electrician take a look at his place? Would a battery UPS system help solve any electrical issues his house might have? Have you guys had any similar problems with bad electricity (signal, strength, etc...)?
 
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A UPS will only help if the cause of the problem is the voltage in the lines dropping too low when the system is under load, causing a temporary blackout (brownouts). If the system is not under load and it's still causing problems, then a UPS won't help, as you'll be running entirely off the battery until it is drained.

Maybe you can get a line conditioner, not sure if it'll help. Has he tried it in any other outlets in his house?
 
Tsumi said:
A UPS will only help if the cause of the problem is the voltage in the lines dropping too low when the system is under load, causing a temporary blackout (brownouts). If the system is not under load and it's still causing problems, then a UPS won't help, as you'll be running entirely off the battery until it is drained.

Maybe you can get a line conditioner, not sure if it'll help. Has he tried it in any other outlets in his house?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had him run it in 4 different rooms. Still...problems.
 
(nevermind, I found the already tried downclock phrase.)

Have his place checked for radiation? :D
 
Assuming this is in the US, have him (or an electrician) check his main voltage, he should have 110-125 volts ideally, anything under 100 volts will cause trouble with switched-mode power supplies. If an electrician does it have them check the main frequency, it should be 60 HZ, or VERY close to that. If that checks out I'd be looking to see if there might be high frequency interference, a faulty fluorescent light fixture, a nearby ham radio op blasting 1,500 watts on HF, etc.
 
You could plug an expensive oscilloscope into the wall outlet. Calling an electrician is probably the cheapest option though. And yeah, it sounds like he's not getting what he should be from the outlets.

Also, did it damage any of the components?
 
Andrew_Carr said:
You could plug an expensive oscilloscope into the wall outlet.
Click to expand...
Just a word of warning: DO NOT connect an oscilloscope to a wall outlet unless you know exactly what you are doing and have appropriate probes (ideally isolated ones).
 
Call an electricial is always a fine answer.

On your own, you could check various outlets with one of these-\
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Gardner-Bender-GFI6302-Receptacle-Tester/dp/B000RUL2UU"]Amazon.com: Gardner Bender #GFI6302 Receptacle Tester: Home Improvement@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/314zLs0lclL.@@AMEPARAM@@314zLs0lclL[/ame]

That will verify that the wiring is correct. If not it will show "open ground" and "hot neutral reverse." Other stuff too, but I've only seen those two show up.

Beyond that you can check voltage (should be 120) and frequency (60Hz) with a multimeter-
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/TekPower-TP4000ZC-RS232-Interaced-Ranging-Multimeter/dp/B000OPDFLM/ref=sr_1_4?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1308342861&sr=1-4"]Amazon.com: TekPower TP4000ZC PC based RS232-Interaced Auto Ranging Digital Multimeter: Home Improvement@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tLpMT5IrL.@@AMEPARAM@@51tLpMT5IrL[/ame]
Not that it's alll that complex, but be sure you know how to use it before trying one out, as sticking probes into live outlets is not for everyone.
 
It's not user error is it? (installing weird stuff?)I rebuild systems all the time at my work and they are perfectly fine, then when they get the users magically they find them selves in the same shape as before.

Edit: He could also buy a killowatt it shows the voltage and hz when you plug something into it.
 
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Andrew_Carr said:
You could plug an expensive oscilloscope into the wall outlet. Calling an electrician is probably the cheapest option though. And yeah, it sounds like he's not getting what he should be from the outlets.

Also, did it damage any of the components?
Click to expand...

The old system he sent back the first time, one RAM module was absolutely dead.


munkle said:
It's not user error is it? (installing weird stuff?)I rebuild systems all the time at my work and they are perfectly fine, then when they get the users magically they find them selves in the same shape as before.

Edit: He could also buy a killowatt it shows the voltage and hz when you plug something into it.
Click to expand...

Nope. The only thing he installed was Office 2007 and Quickbooks. Nothing else.
 
Hmmm. Very odd. Thing is high end power supplies don't really care about power much. They are all active PFC and part of that means being highly frequency and voltage agnostic. Most of them will run from like 90-260 volts, 47-63Hz. So even if the power is fairly fucked up, it is hard for it to matter to the PSU. Just the nature of their design. Also RFI on the line matters little since they generate plenty themselves with their switching and it all gets filtered out when going DC.

Maybe it is getting hit with power spikes, and they are sneaking by a cheap surge protector. You could look at getting a high end series mode surge protector. Unlike normal shunt protectors they don't rely on a working safety ground (so in the event that isn't wired up it wouldn't be a problem) and they also stop all surges, even small ones. Pricey little bastards though. The ones I like and use are Zero Surge. If you want ones that completely block all surges, you want their more expensive TSC models, though their WVR models still block all but a few volts.

Though it is probably not needed I have one of their TSC ones in front of my computer and audio gear. Cheap insurance, I figure.

The other possibility would be lack of a safety ground (the third pin on an outlet). That can cause real problems for computers, particularly if they don't have a good surge protector in front of them. If you get one of those testers shown, it'll tell you if the ground pin is wired wrong.
 
Skipping a UPS can be a big mistake. Every system I've ever had either had a high quality surge or UPS. Someone I know never uses them (but thinks those power strips are the cats meow), and he's lost about every system he's ever bought.

I had an electrician actually bork the wiring during an upgrade and he blew out my UPS on my PC, and my surge protector suppressed the spike to the TV and other electronics. Everything still worked, but had to buy a new UPS. No they aren't a cure all for a direct lightning strike, but they are great for brownouts, blackouts, minor/moderate surges and can help when there are intermittent electrical problems. Having a UPS is the only way to fly.
 
The other possibility would be lack of a safety ground (the third pin on an outlet). That can cause real problems for computers, particularly if they don't have a good surge protector in front of them. If you get one of those testers shown, it'll tell you if the ground pin is wired wrong.
Click to expand...

^ That's what I was thinking. Check the grounding. I've read a bunch of stories on forums before about people who had stability issues and it turns out their grounding was bad.
 
Thanks guys. I'm going to have him test his grounding, then regardless have him get a decent UPS. He did have a UPS installed, but it was 300w(lol..yeah).
 
Always test wall outlets under load because they can measure fine without load, even with really bad wiring. The safest way do this is by plugging a Kill-A-Watt into each outlet and a hair dryer into the Kill-A-Watt. If the hair dryer causes a decrease of over 2 VAC, there's likely a problem with the outlet or the wiring on the circuit. I had an outlet that went down to 80VAC when a power saw was run from it, thanks to a bad push-in connector (2 wires held by 1 spring) at one of the outlets on the circuit.

Many surge protectors and probably all battery backup supplies have an indicator that lights up if no earth ground connection is detected. I don't know how much an earth ground matters as far as AC noise goes, but Toshiba once issued a bulletin to solve line noise in some of its A2xx notebooks by switching them to 3-wire power adapters. Oddly, it applied only to the AMD-based ones, not the Intel-based ones.
 
larrymoencurly said:
Always test wall outlets under load because they can measure fine without load, even with really bad wiring ... I had an outlet that went down to 80VAC when a power saw was run from it, thanks to a bad push-in connector (2 wires held by 1 spring) at one of the outlets on the circuit.
Click to expand...

The is why testing for a faulty ground using a load should be done very carefully! Discovering a weak connection by starting a fire is not ideal ... lol. Ideally you have a variable load, and as the load increases, you start to see that something is wrong before the full load is applied.
 
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