PSU Problems
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Not quite sure if it is my PSU - My PC keeps rebooting at random times, i intially looked around at harddrive failing symptoms and have turned off the XP Restart on error as well as done a CHKDSK with no problems. I didnt experience any reboot problems for a couple of days and now its gone and done it twice in 15minutes.
It seems that random reboots is a symptom for a shoddy PSU and having a quick look at Speedfan/Hwmonitor it seems that my +12v is reporting 22.44volts? I know sweet F.A about voltages or if that is reporting 2 rails or what. Eitherway it doesnt seem to be right.
Should i be lookin at replacing the PSU pronto and is there any specific Voltage monitoring programs I can get to double check?
- I also occasionally hear very audible "click/tink" sounds, akin to when you boot up... although they dont seem to cause the pc to reboot.
It seems that random reboots is a symptom for a shoddy PSU and having a quick look at Speedfan/Hwmonitor it seems that my +12v is reporting 22.44volts? I know sweet F.A about voltages or if that is reporting 2 rails or what. Eitherway it doesnt seem to be right.
Should i be lookin at replacing the PSU pronto and is there any specific Voltage monitoring programs I can get to double check?
- I also occasionally hear very audible "click/tink" sounds, akin to when you boot up... although they dont seem to cause the pc to reboot.
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BFG also replaced (and upgraded) my gfx card when it broke, which was cool
^ I brought it a while ago thinking that my previous 350watt PSU was faulty - at the time my DVD Drive was refusing to burn things and if a DVD was in the drive it wouldnt spin up properly, however it appears to be my dvd drive that was fucked then.
I've not added anything new to my system, there hasnt been any change for ages.. aside this monitor which uses 80watts but thats powered by its own socket?
Its a bastard, i get emailed with a nice art test to get cracking on and then this happens - I will RMA, but with ebuyer that wont show up till next Friday so i'ma have to get a stand in and hope that fixes the problems.
Cheers - hopefully a new one will solve the problem T_T
So I let some PC tech dudes check it out and they have a tinker with it - They tried a lesser graphics card in at first... which seemed to work for a while only to start acting up again. They formatted and replaced with the PSU again and it seemed to be all fine and dandy running Modern warfare 2 for ~6hours straight.
I've had my PC back for a couple of weeks now and it started rebooting once or twice a day and again it seems to be on the rise... Thing is, i just cant seem to nail any consistency with it - about 3 days ago the PC was running for about 26hours before a reboot... then after that reboot it did it another ~7 times in the space of 5hours.
On this current PSU ive noticed;
- On youtube, loading one or two videos... this has happened too many times.
- VERY rarely reboots when in games, my CPU will be at 42degrees... playing MW2 / ME2 for 2+ hours straight with NO reboots
- between 6am - 2pm it seems to happen far more, possibly because im browsing
To summerise what ive tried;
- 3 Different PSUs, the first of which had been running with no problems for a year
- 2 graphics cards
- Formatting / different antivirus
- Harddrive error check with a HDD monitor
It's got to the point where its starting to get in the way of what i want to do, its finally corrupted a .psd which is where i draw the line... the PC is fine for what i need so if it could be solved by paying £200 rather than £1000 thatd be ideal i just dont want to waste anymore money only to have it turn out to have been the wrong component.
From reading around i still havent stress tested or checked every facit of my PC so im hardly covering all the bases at this point... its just hardly convenient and i dont really have everything available to me to do so.
You definitely need to stress test it, and check the temps. Get speedfan and some software like sisoft(there loads of free stress testing software). Test for several hours.
Make sure you know what the temperature tolerances of your parts are.
I still think its probably the psu, minimum for a decent one at 500w is approx $50. But there is no point in presuming anything, make sure you investigate as much as possible and be as certain you can, eliminate the things that you know work fine(thats not so easy if it is the psu though). Connect only the bare minimum of parts.
What is your system specs anyway?
I've got speedfan and when I'm playing games my CPU goes no higher than 42degrees - sitting at ~26-32 idle depending on my room temperature.
Thing is, this is my 3rd 500w PSU - the 2nd one only rebooting in games and this one is the same as the first in that its completely random... and rarely in games?
- I doubt my pc will actually stay up long enough to stress test - then again, that seems to depend on the time of the day and what the moon is doing?! I was thinkin of grabbing memtest and checking my ram next!
I doubt its the memory you'd end up with the bluescreen of death or software corruptions.
Check in the bios see what the settings are, at where it will cut out, what temps, fan speeds and volts before it will shut the pc down.