Personal computing discussed
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just brew it! wrote:Until I got towards the end of your post I was going to say "PSU", but I guess that has been (mostly) ruled out.
Could've been a dead CMOS battery was the original trigger (if you still have the old battery and have a multimeter, check its voltage). Also sounds like whatever you were doing to clear the CMOS simply didn't work the first 2 times.
If it starts happening again, I would start suspecting the PSU.
MileageMayVary wrote:Can you verify that the PSU fan is spinning?
Chrispy_ wrote:just brew it! wrote:Until I got towards the end of your post I was going to say "PSU", but I guess that has been (mostly) ruled out.
Could've been a dead CMOS battery was the original trigger (if you still have the old battery and have a multimeter, check its voltage). Also sounds like whatever you were doing to clear the CMOS simply didn't work the first 2 times.
If it starts happening again, I would start suspecting the PSU.
Seen this a dozen time on old Sandy machines. The batteries are always the problem, I stopped even trying to diagnose them until I'd changed the battery because of the completely erratic behaviour.
Aranarth wrote:MileageMayVary wrote:Can you verify that the PSU fan is spinning?
Actually... no.
I think I should really double check. I'm not sure if it blows down through the bottom of the case or out the back. And I don't remember there being dust on the dust filter. There is 140mm fan right next to it using the same filter and that has dust on its location.
I'll take a look tonight or over the weekend. Last thing I need is the PS suddenly blowing.
just brew it! wrote:Officially, there are no user serviceable parts and the capacitors inside the PSU might kill you. Unofficially...Back in the day, the fan in the PSU of my dual Athlon (MPX) rig failed. I started to smell burning electronics...
Chrispy_ wrote:Has it been overclocked at 4.5GHz its entire life?
If the PSU is known to be good, even under load, the next most probably scenario is that your CPU is dying. That's one of the risks that comes with overclocking - increased voltage and clockspeeds will have exponentially higher electromigration effects on the silicon. If you were "auto" overclocking, this would make it even worse, because they typically apply more voltage than necessary. Disabling speedstep because of your overclock also means that the CPU never gets to downclock and cut back on the voltage that does the most damage.
- At stock, I'd expect Sandy to last for 12+ years, based on some very rough extrapolation of overclocked endurance for older chips that were running 24/7
- Light overclock (1.25V or lower) - maybe 8 years? I don't have any experience/knowledge of these failing through electromigration yet.
- Heavy overclock (1.4V or higher) - 3-5 years. Failures of 5GHz Sandys are common knowledge among the 5GHz club and have been for a few years, unfortunately.
These all assume an 8h working day duty cycle. If you leave your PC on overnight that will obviously add to the duty cycle, and it depends whether your overclock leaves Speedstep enabled or whether it's a full-time overclock - with peak voltage running all the time too.
The Egg wrote:In short, it might be a bit amateurish to blame the board manufacturer, but I'd like to take a moment to blame your board manufacturer.
Chrispy_ wrote:It's starting to sound like a C7 sleep state issue that is effectively a compatibility problem between your OS, PSU and BIOS.
If your PSU was flaky, it would be fine at idle (boot/POST) and the fault would manifest at high power draw - which you've confirmed is not the case because it'll game for 4+ hours.
Have your run a simultaneous Furmark and Prime95 on all threads, yet? (or the built-in CPU burner in Furmark?). Stability for more than 1h at full CPU+GPU load usually certifies the PSU as rock-solid.
just brew it! wrote:It is stories like this which reinforce my decision (made approximately a decade ago) to run stock CPU and RAM clocks on all systems which aren't explicitly "screw around" or "smoke test" boxes. I don't want to be dealing with weird behaviors like this when I'm trying to use the system for something else!