Weird Cold Boot Issue

E

EPS Sniper

Gawd
Joined
Mar 13, 2000
Messages
609
I am having this really odd cold boot issue that has been happening to me recently. Essentially if I try to start up the computer from a completely off state I'll hear everything spin up and turn on for about 1-2 full seconds, then completely turn off--as if someone is behind the computer pulling out the cable. If I try to press the power button again it does nothing at all. I have to flip the switch on the back of the PSU off, then on and try again and keep doing this until the machine completely comes up.

It feels to be as though the machine doesn't have enough power to get off the ground, so to speak. I have a very strong Corsair PSU, so I don't know if that could be the issue or not. Here are my specs:

Gigabyte GA-790X-UD4P
AMD 550 unlocked and OC'ed to 3.4ghz (never had issues before with this setup)
Corsair H50
Corsair HX520 power supply
4gb Crucial RAM
1TB Western Digital black (the problems started happening about 1-2 weeks after installing this)
Lite-On DVD Burner
XFX Radeon 5770
HT Omega CLARO HALO soundcard

Originally I had 2 120mm fans (Enermax Magmas) and a Corsair H50 pump connected to the 3 fan headers on the mobo, but I pulled off the 2 fans and put them on a dedicated lead from the power supply. It seems like the computer has more "oomph" but it still has the start up issue. Once I get the computer on it stays on for hours and days just fine and will do gaming/coding/whatever with ease.

What do you guys think it is? I am thinking it could be one of the following:
1) Bad PSU
2) Too much load from the H50 on the fan header
3) Bad hard drive (I bought it from Amazon and they suck at packing hard drives)
4) CPU unlock gone bad (but weeks later?)
5) Bad mobo
 
Re-lock the CPU and see if the cold boot issue happen again.
 
I tried that out and here is what I found. I was at the desktop, rebooted, went into the bios, and set the ACC settings back to normal, and rebooted. Everything went up fine, so I shut down, went to work, and came back.

When I turned on my computer I heard my video card cooler BLASTING at some ridiculous amount of power, then it went quiet and everything just sat there running, but the system didn't post and the monitors didn't come on at all. I tried turning it off and on and the system would turn on, but not post.

I turned off the computer, flipped the switch on the back of the PSU to off, held the power button and waited 10 seconds, then flipped the switch on the back of the PSU and turned it on. After that the machine booted normally.

I sent an e-mail to Corsair about my PSU, as I noticed my -12v rail was sitting at -9.84v and they automatically issued me an RMA. I didn't get any feedback from them other than the RMA number, so I don't know if that is actually the cause or not.

It seems like power is the cause to me, though. I couldn't boot cold with 3 fans connected to the fan mobo headers, so I put them on a dedicated lead and it improved a bit. I took off two unlocked cores and it helped a bit more, so it seems to me like the PSU is struggling to get the computer to post. That video card issue was alarming, though, so I don't know what that's all about.

Any help is appreciated :)
 
EPS Sniper said:
I sent an e-mail to Corsair about my PSU, as I noticed my -12v rail was sitting at -9.84v
Click to expand...

Was that from a DMM or some software? If software. don't trust it at all. Get a Digital Multimeter and follow this:
http://www.bfgpower.com/troubleshooting.html#DMM

If DMM, that's still within the +/-5% of the ATX specifications for the -12V rail. Someone over at Corsair jumped the gun a bit....

To rule out the PSU, try another PSU and see what happens.
 
I'll try to track down another PSU to test this out. In the meantime I noticed a strange noise coming from my hard drive (hard to tell with how loud the GPU fan was). I disconnected the hard drive and it took about 15-20 seconds but eventually the computer posted every time. Do you think it's still a PSU issue or a hard drive issue?
 
I still can't tell what's the issue here is because all the symptoms are pretty generic. Can't tell you more till you try another PSU and/or another HDD.
 
I agree that I'm being all over the place with this. I managed to get it to post, set everything to optimized defaults, and the system seems to boot up just fine. I'm running Prime95 for a few hours to see if anything snaps, then I'll report my results.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top