Hi guys, recently I’ve been having some problems with my computer freezing or BSOD’ing. It started about 4 days ago, the bsod would pop up and shutdown the comp, after restarting the windows error reporter said it was a stop command sent by a bad device driver. So instead of messing about I just formatted and installed clean versions of everything. Everything was ok until today when it started again, however now it just freezes or the screen goes black and the monitor reports no signal! So I’m thinking hardware problem, the likely candidates are my GFX card and PSU the youngest and oldest components in the system respectively. The PSU (450W) reports a low voltage on the 12v line at 11.3 and 4.3 on the 5v line. I’m currently running a copy of prime95 and everything is stable, and memtest98 shown no errors. Any ideas?
I'd say the PSU is giving an unstable voltage, the motherboard detects it, stops the PC to prevent a surge, then it stabilises and boots up. Try another PSU.
Agreed 450W is far to small nowadays Good tip but the psu is better for those who believe vista is better. An even better option is to install Ubuntu @ £000.00
If you look at the components listed in his signature you will find that your statement is invalid. Sure running quad core with an 8800GTX but not in this instance. What is it with tech support in these forums, the first sign of trouble and people cry POWER SUPPLY. I wonder how many people have wasted money based on this type of incident????
C-Sniper - its a JSP Sprite looks exactl like this http://www.pccasegear.com/prod1383.htm I bought it before I learned that not all power supplies are created equally DougEdey - Yeah, I thought something similar was happening. Now i've had time to think about, it this isnt the first time its happened. It happened a few months back the problem seemed to fix itself I suspect a dodgy molex connector. I changed the one the gfx card was using last night and i've not had a crash since... zr-ox - 450w 'should' be enough for my needs but ya gotta remember the prescott core is abit of a power hog and that the power supply isnt a reputable brand, if it was a tagan or a viewsonic or something though maybe I wouldnt be having this problem. Plus i'll probably buy a larger PSU anyway for future upgrades AJB2K3 - I'm using XP Pro cheers for the replies so far guys!
if you read some of the hw reviews on bit-tech you can see that a complete system often only draws 200-350 W (measured at wall outlet) so a 450 W psu should be enough for most systems yes... the problem is that many psu's dont actually give as much power as advertised (peak instead of continuous power listed), that the whole multiple +12V rails puts a cut on how much you can load per rail, that the psu's only deliver the advertised W at a low temp (which you dont have at the top of a closed case) and so on...
Yes I know it's a power hog but random crashes and reboots are more likely to be attributed to ram issues than a psu. I ran a prescott on a psu from a chieftec case, it was overclocked from 2.8 - 3.6 for 1½ years before upgrading. Friend has that pc npw and it's still running fine. Have you tried running Orthos or Prime 95? If you have any memory issues that should help indicate. If you have 2 modules then remove one and test, if it still fails remove that and use the other. If it's still failing try borrowing some memory from a friend, and also their PSU. The point I was trying to make is that there is a trend to blame the psu for instability problems in these forums. Granted it may be causing the problem but there are so many other things you need to check first. Most people run off to the shops and buy a new one the minute some says "what power supply do you have", any way good luck getting this sorted out.
Although im a ubuntu user is still have a XP pc for converting dvd 2 psp That is probubly because most of us have experieced psu issues at one time or the other and its usually the psu that goes first ofter killing off everything else. [story mode] My first reasulted in the psu run with only half the psu casing on it because i had to wait 4 days to get to a shop![/story mode]
I killed 4 psu's in 4 months once. I finally said enough with this and got a psu with 100 more watts and 2 fans and a good brand name. and when I say killed, I dont mean random bsod's I mean blue sparks shooting out the back and smoke filling the room. One time I had my head down by the pc because I thought I could smell smoke, thats when the blue sparks started shooting out the back.
Ey ti's true than many a problem are attributed to psu faults, but I do really think that it may be the case. Not trying to be a ass or anthing but I did say that in my fist post i've ran a prime95 suite, for an hour and since then i've ran another suit for an additional 4 hours AND a barage of memtest suits ranging from an hour to 3 hours and still its shows nothing And it does kinda mention in my sig that i'm running 4x 256 modules, and all of them are ok I base that on the memtest and prime test's coming back ok, and the fact i've swapped them out one my one and ran tests on them. Still, since my last post my machine has been ok! Seems its sorted itself out!
