Spontaneous Power Off

A

A_Tom

Member
Today my desktop computer (Asus P8 H67-M EVO) did a spontaneous power off. It's about 2 years old and has been extremely reliable. There was no blue screen, it just powered down as if I had pressed the power on/off button. It restarted normally. I can't look at the bios right now because I'm using it, but I'm fairly certain it's supposed to auto restart on power failure.

I'm guessing this is a power supply problem so I will be ordering a new one, but I thought I'd ask if there are any things I can do to check or verify what caused the shutdown. This is a caseless computer, so I'm confident it's not a heat related issue.

Thanks for any help.

Tom
 
Do you have any auto updates running, it may be possible the system shut down for a restart.

Did it actually shut down or just cut off instantly ?
 
jamesd1981 said:
Do you have any auto updates running, it may be possible the system shut down for a restart.

Did it actually shut down or just cut off instantly ?
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I do not allow anything to auto update, including windows and windows defender. The machine runs minimal applications; it's used for futures trading only; no browser no email use.

The machine just went instantly to the power off position; no blue screen or anything (as if you press and hold the on/off button). On power up I got the prompt saying Windows did not shut down normally, but the computer restarted and is running normally now.
 
An abrupt power off usually means overheating. What brand and model of power supply do you have?
 
johnb35 said:
An abrupt power off usually means overheating. What brand and model of power supply do you have?
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The power supply is a Thermaltake TR2-430. It's not likely overheating because it is outside of a case and thermally isolated from other equipment. The power demand is also very low since there is nothing plugged into the mother board other than 1 SSD and 1 HDD. No video board. I took it apart and blew out the dust and it's back to running.

I will order a backup power supply and if it happens again, I'll change it out.
 
I didn't say the power supply is overheating. Just asked what power supply you had. I'm talking about processor overheating.
 
Well I can see right off the bat that the 12 volt line is only reading 7 volts. That is way out of specs. You should get the psu tested to make sure that reading isn't wrong. But at the moment, I would say you have a bad power supply.
 
johnb35 said:
Well I can see right off the bat that the 12 volt line is only reading 7 volts. That is way out of specs. You should get the psu tested to make sure that reading isn't wrong. But at the moment, I would say you have a bad power supply.
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I am able to read 12v on the mobo with a meter and the PS is outputting 12v on both V1 and V2, so that might be a bad number.
 
Interesting. The only thing you can do now is just watch and see what happens. Personally though, I wouldn't trust that particular unit. I've used it in a clients build a couple years ago and it went out within a year.
 
johnb35 said:
Interesting. The only thing you can do now is just watch and see what happens. Personally though, I wouldn't trust that particular unit. I've used it in a clients build a couple years ago and it went out within a year.
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Ok, thanks for your help.
 
A_Tom said:
Nothing out of the ordinary.
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Let me rephrase that:

What exactly where you doing when it shut down...

A computer can be used for a million and one things, so "out of the ordinary" could be any one of those things without knowing what your ordinary usage is.
 
There are exceptions, but most of the time with a sudden shut down and restart. Its the power supply, either overheating or a low rail. If you have CPU heat warning (ever how its worded in your bios) enabled in the bios, that can cause it to. Usually anything else like a driver/program/hardddrive glitch will cause it to blue screen or lock up.
 
Aastii said:
Let me rephrase that:

What exactly where you doing when it shut down...

A computer can be used for a million and one things, so "out of the ordinary" could be any one of those things without knowing what your ordinary usage is.
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I wasn't doing anything. I just looked up and it was off. It was just running it's normal applications (2) and went off just as if I'd pressed the power off button. It runs these same two apps day in and day out so there was nothing operationally that cause it.
 
StrangleHold said:
There are exceptions, but most of the time with a sudden shut down and restart. Its the power supply, either overheating or a low rail. If you have CPU heat warning (ever how its worded in your bios) enabled in the bios, that can cause it to. Usually anything else like a driver/program/hardddrive glitch will cause it to blue screen or lock up.
Click to expand...

I don't recall what those BIOS settings are, but I'll check; thanks for the pointer.
 
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