Hi there bit-tech forumers - I'm wondering if someone can confirm my suspicions regarding the culprit in an intermittent reboot issue I have with my new (and first!) build? It's pretty bloody annoying to get a problem like this with my first-ever self build, but I am maintaining my sanity with the thought that it will be all the more satisfying when I finally get it fixed, and I will have learned even more about the guts of a PC by the time it's working!! The rig is: MSI Z68a GD55 (G3) Core i5 2500K BeQuiet! Dark Rock Advanced cooler 16 Gb Corsair Vengeance LP 1600Mhz (overkill, I know!) Gigabyte 570 Super OC Crucial M4 128 Gb SSD Samsung F3 1Tb Samsung optical drive Antec High Current Pro 750W Fractal R3 Win 7 Home 64-bit Dell U2312HM (1920x1080) The machine boots fine to the desktop, but develops random reboots after anything from 15 minutes to 4 hours of use - I was yet to tax it with anything seriously graphically intensive when the problem surfaced, and I haven't (yet) been overclocking, or messed around in the BIOS other than to switch the boot order and set the memory to run at 1600MHz rather than Auto (ie 1333 MHz). The main trigger seems to be if I open too many tabs in Firefox while running browser based games. So far I have checked: Running a different browser - IE and Chrome both give the same problem Running memtest - all ok Running speedfan - all cores at about 30 C, GPU at 35 C when reboots occurring, all fans working fine. Enabled logging of BSODs and switched off auto-reboot - no logs being generated (and still auto-reboots - presumably because the machine isn't generating an actual BSOD error code?) Checked the event log - reboot is from critical event 41 - Kernel power - all details = '0' - this makes me very suspicious of a dodgy PSU. I then removed & replaced all the cables in the rig, re-installed Win7 SP1 on the SSD with nothing additional except a WiFi driver and did the following: Installed and ran 14 hrs of Prime95 - all ok, Speedfan showing temps staying about 50 C all cores, no reboots at all. Installed latest WHQL release nVidia driver, and ran 3Dmark11 - got first sign of reboot on second run-through of basic benchmark. Run Furmark - instant reboot on starting. So I then changed the rail on the PSU that I was taking the additional 6-pin connector from for the 570 (the other being from the non-modular 8pin connector which is on another rail), which allowed me to run Furmark the first time - getting to a stable 67 C on the GPU temp after a few minutes. Hoping I had sorted it, I stopped Furmark, but then running it a second time tripped a reboot again - no dump being generated (yes, I have re-enabled it after the re-install!), and still all '0's on the event log for the Kernel Power error 41. In summary - to me it looks like I definitely have a duff PSU which is dropping power when the 570 kicks in thus causing the reboot without producing a BSOD. I don't have a voltmeter (or the knowledge not to electrocute myself!) to check the Antec, and my old machine only has a dodgy unbranded 350W PSU which is about 7 years old, so there is no way I can use that to try to run my new hardware. Before I bash off an RMA to Ebuyer (does anyone have any experience with their returns?), can some of the resident experts confirm if I'm on the right track? For the time being I've taken out the graphics card and am just running on the i5's GPU - hopefully this at least lets me run stably for now, and my old PSU probably should be able to cope with just the mobo, CPU, memory and drives if I have to send the new one back. Cheers, Matt
Certainly sounds like a PSU problem. Also ebuyer are dead good on the customer service side of things.
Thanks for the speedy reply Blogins! Once they get their website login running again I'll get on to them then.
Won't fix your problem, but will avoid breaking your SSD (sever performance reduction, that can't be recovered) Be sure that you have, in your BIOS, your SATA controller set to AHCI, and not IDE (can also be called: Compatibility or Legacy). If it's not on AHCI already, then you will need to re-install Windows with the mode set correctly. AHCI mode provides: -> TRIM support (Win7 or newer needed), which protects the SSD from reducing performance over time. -> NCQ (Native Command Queue), changes the way HDD gets data: It boost greatly performance. Seek time is the main issue on why HDD's are slow. This reduces it a lot. -> eSATA support -> Hot swappable HDD/SSD. Use IDE (or also called Compatibility or Legacy) if you use Windows XP and older OS.
Ah yes Goodbytes, my mistake, that is the only other thing I have changed in the BIOS, forgot about that! Thank you for posting
Good news, Ebuyer have found a fault on my old PSU, new one should be here by Monday. In meantime I think I've worked out what was causing boot-up hang problems on my old machine ( looks like a faulty hard drive) so hopefully now have a back up system instead of a box of junk! Bonus! Thanks for the help in this thread and elsewhere in the forums. Hopefully come Monday my new rig will be up and running properly!
Happy to report that the new PSU has arrived, and so far all seems to be working as intended - can now run prime95 and furmark together and no power-outages Thanks again!
Thanks for that informative post GB, however I do believe it is possible to switch to AHCI without reinstalling. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 If you run the fix in this article, you should be able to enable AHCI after restarting and you should be good to go. The thing is that when you install Win 7 with IDE enabled instead of AHCI, it doesn't bother to enable the AHCI driver. Then you switch to AHCI and Windows can't find the driver so you get a BSOD. Running the fix in that Microsoft article basically changes a registry value that turns on the AHCI driver. Anyways, sounds like the OP is sorted so happy days
Some times it doesn't work, it depends on the SATA controller and or it's drivers. And beside you want to do first thing, especially for an SSD.
