SERIOUS! POWER ISSUE HAS RETURNED!

The VCR King

The VCR King

Well-Known Member
Note: This is copied and pasted from a thread I put in another forum.

My gaming PC, when I am using it, will sometimes just shut off without warning. It will simply lose power and turn off, like a power outage.

Other times, the screen will go black, and there will be no USB power to the keyboard or anything. The PC, however, would be "running," as in the fans are spinning and the case is lit up. Pressing the power button or using the reset button does nothing. To reboot the PC, I'd have to unplug it's power then plug it back in.

I haven't modified this PC much, only thing I've done is replaced the fans on the CPU cooler when the bearings seized and I smoked the fan motors.
bigsmile.png


Specs:
Power Supply: Cougar CMX-1000
Motherboard: MSI 890FXA-GD65
CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 (1090T)
Graphics: ATI Radeon 6950HD
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB, 1600MHz

The system is NOT overclocked or anything like that. This issue occurred when the previous owner had this PC as well.

This issue is honestly strange, it will happen very frequently, then it seems to go away for awhile, but when I think it's fixed itself, it's back again.

------
Today:
OK, it just happened again...

I was playing TF2 and the screen went black. I lost all USB power (no keyboard or mouse, and memory card reader stops), but the computer still had power (the fans were still lit and spinning). I pressed the reset and power buttons and that did nothing. I unplugged the PC and plugged it back in to do a hard reset. I just got done booting the system and am now typing this. There is absolutely NO warning when it does this. Everything just... blacks out. I want to know what is going on because I am afraid if I have to keep force-resetting it I will end up damaging something, and I do NOT want to lose my gaming PC! It's one of my most precious things I have.

Speccy Screenshot:
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Can anyone please help me? And big thanks to anyone who does!
 
Take the motherboard out and make sure its not grounding against the case. Confirm there are enough standoffs and they are in the correct locations. You need 9 standoffs for for that board. If they are good, then assume your psu is bad.
 
johnb35 said:
Take the motherboard out and make sure its not grounding against the case. Confirm there are enough standoffs and they are in the correct locations. You need 9 standoffs for for that board. If they are good, then assume your psu is bad.
Click to expand...
Last time this happened and I checked there were 9 standoffs. I'm thinking about going down to a 900W power supply. I might get an Antec High-Current Gamer.
 
Might be time for a new power supply. I remember you having this issue before and it was standoffs but if nothing's changed since then then it could be a bad power supply, or maybe your board is faulty?

For two 6950s you can probably use a good 650-750W PSU to be honest, no need for 900W for two 6950s. I used a Corsair RM650 in my last build and I was impressed by that. 80+ Gold, fully modular and near-silent operation for about £80 ($110) makes it great value. I'd probably recommend that since you are looking at spending a good amount on a PSU anyway: http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-80PLU...&qid=1442353851&sr=8-1&keywords=corsair+rm650

To be honest you can probably buy used 7970s or R9 280s for a bit more than a used 6950 or 6970 now and either would be a better option than two 6950s in CrossFire. I found a 7970 GHz Edition on eBay for less than £100 recently which is kind of sad because they were about £350-400 when they were new 2-3 years ago and now you can get them used for about a third of their retail value, so there are good options out there if you're buying used.

Here's a Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB for just $155 used (Buy It Now): http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sapphire-Va...on-3GB-DDR5-/121759231285?hash=item1c596a6d35 that's just an example of what you can get your hands on if you're prepared to buy used (which you would be if you are considering buying a second 6950). By comparison 6950s aren't going for much less used on eBay.
 
Is your card still overclocked? A lot of black screen radeon hangs are vram related. Revert the card to stock and see if you have an improvement.
 
Make sure you update the chipset drivers, and all else http://www.msi.com/support/mb/890FXAGD65.html#down-utility&Win8 64

I would use DisplayDriverUninstaller in safe mode to clean all drivers off and conduct a new driver install.

Update DirectX

Ensure Bios RAM voltages are correctly set.

Remove ALL overcloccks

The PSU can provide over 900W of power at 12V so I very much doubt its that. Its not a great model (made by HEC) but, still, I would be suprised.


My thoughts are

Driver / mobo chipset issuess
Overheating RAM/Mosfet or something else
Incorrect BIOS voltage settings
Unbalanced 12V Rail Distribution. - consider where you are putting all your power connectors and spread them over the rails.
 
I have removed all overclocking and everything is updated. This issue was occurring way before I even did the overclocks, but now its happening more often.
 
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