Power problems

[Yippee38]

I've been struggling with my wife's PC crashing for years now. When she plays a graphically intensive game, her PC will crash randomly. Sometimes she can play for quite a while, and sometimes it will crash right away after starting a game. I've replaced every piece of hardware at least once. I did all kinds of troubleshooting. I finally discovered the problem. Apparently, the circuit her PC is plugged into has poor A/C power quality. I installed a UPS and the problems went away completely. Great.

Fast forward a bit more than a year, and she needed an upgrade. I installed an additional 2 additional sticks of RAM, an additional hard drive on her PC, and tried to add a second video card (SLI). Immediately, the UPS was overloaded. So I took out the second video card and ordered a higher capacity UPS. Great. However, her PC is back to crashing randomly. At first, I thought it was the new hard drive. But I moved everything back to the original hard drive and removed power from the new drive, and it still kept crashing. I ran MemTest86 all night without any errors.

The behavior is exactly like it was originally. I'm wondering if possibly her PSU isn't up to the task. She's got a Corsair TX850 that's been on her PC for probably around 5 years. Her PC is connected to a CyberPower UPS. I'm not home right now, so I can't check, but I'm pretty sure it's a CyberPower EC850LCD.

What do you guys think? Should I replace the PSU? If so, what are your recommendations. According to PSU calculators, she only needs under 500W even with the SLI (GTX 670s). I went with an 850W to have plenty power without having to worry about adding mem or a drive.

 

[Yippee38]

On a related note, is there any way to test for power problems on my AC circuit and are fairly inexpensive. Because obviously, fixing that would be the best solution. It's an old house, but her PC is in the basement, so I have access to almost all of the power circuit.

 

[Bandalo]

I've been struggling with my wife's PC crashing for years now. When she plays a graphically intensive game, her PC will crash randomly. Sometimes she can play for quite a while, and sometimes it will crash right away after starting a game. I've replaced every piece of hardware at least once. I did all kinds of troubleshooting. I finally discovered the problem. Apparently, the circuit her PC is plugged into has poor A/C power quality. I installed a UPS and the problems went away completely. Great.

Fast forward a bit more than a year, and she needed an upgrade. I installed an additional 2 additional sticks of RAM, an additional hard drive on her PC, and tried to add a second video card (SLI). Immediately, the UPS was overloaded. So I took out the second video card and ordered a higher capacity UPS. Great. However, her PC is back to crashing randomly. At first, I thought it was the new hard drive. But I moved everything back to the original hard drive and removed power from the new drive, and it still kept crashing. I ran MemTest86 all night without any errors.

The behavior is exactly like it was originally. I'm wondering if possibly her PSU isn't up to the task. She's got a Corsair TX850 that's been on her PC for probably around 5 years. Her PC is connected to a CyberPower UPS. I'm not home right now, so I can't check, but I'm pretty sure it's a CyberPower EC850LCD.

What do you guys think? Should I replace the PSU? If so, what are your recommendations. According to PSU calculators, she only needs under 500W even with the SLI (GTX 670s). I went with an 850W to have plenty power without having to worry about adding mem or a drive.

Don't rely on PSU calculators, get a meter and measure the actual draw from the wall.

A PSU rating and a UPS rating can be very different. Make sure you're look at the right units. (PSUs are typically rated in watts, and UPS in VA)

Unless you're an electrician, don't try to troubleshoot problems with home wiring. Hire a pro. It'll cost you more, but you can be sure it'll be done properly and you're not going to burn your house down.

 

[Yippee38]

Don't rely on PSU calculators, get a meter and measure the actual draw from the wall.

Yeah. I've done that. I'm well under the limit of the PSU.

A PSU rating and a UPS rating can be very different. Make sure you're look at the right units. (PSUs are typically rated in watts, and UPS in VA)

Yeah. They just happen to be both 850s. I didn't plan it that way. I had the PSU in my PC before I upgraded. She gets all my hand-me-down hardware. I had a 600Va UPS on her machine before, and it couldn't handle the load. That's why I went up to the 850Va.

Unless you're an electrician, don't try to troubleshoot problems with home wiring. Hire a pro. It'll cost you more, but you can be sure it'll be done properly and you're not going to burn your house down.

Yeah. That's probably the best choice. I hate trying to find a good service company though. <sigh>

 

[Bandalo]

Yeah. I've done that. I'm well under the limit of the PSU.



Yeah. They just happen to be both 850s. I didn't plan it that way. I had the PSU in my PC before I upgraded. She gets all my hand-me-down hardware. I had a 600Va UPS on her machine before, and it couldn't handle the load. That's why I went up to the 850Va.



Yeah. That's probably the best choice. I hate trying to find a good service company though. <sigh>

What's the actual draw for the tower and the whole system (tower+monitor+printer/etc)?

Well, what's what I mean with the ratings...an 850VA UPS will only support around 510W peak (and you're gonna get about 30 seconds before it drops out at that level). So depending on what the power is doing, that may not be a beefy enough UPS for that machine. Also remember to add in things like monitors and such that are also plugged into the UPS.

 

[Yippee38]

What's the actual draw for the tower and the whole system (tower+monitor+printer/etc)?

Well, what's what I mean with the ratings...an 850VA UPS will only support around 510W peak (and you're gonna get about 30 seconds before it drops out at that level). So depending on what the power is doing, that may not be a beefy enough UPS for that machine. Also remember to add in things like monitors and such that are also plugged into the UPS.

I'll have to check that out when I get home tonight. I'll let you know. Maybe I didn't upgrade her UPS far enough.

 

[Bandalo]

I'll have to check that out when I get home tonight. I'll let you know. Maybe I didn't upgrade her UPS far enough.

My professional opinion (as a former Navy electrician) is to check the UPS, but really the problem is the wiring. I would really recommend you get that checked by a pro before it causes some other problem. Like a house fire.

 

[Yippee38]

My professional opinion (as a former Navy electrician) is to check the UPS, but really the problem is the wiring. I would really recommend you get that checked by a pro before it causes some other problem. Like a house fire.

Oh yeah. Fortunately, this wiring is fairly straightforward. It's in the basement, and my wife's office is demolished. So I have access to everything. My suspicion is that it is the lack of a dedicated, quality ground. This house is old enough that all of the wiring is just two wires. I really want to get the basement re-wired.

When I was tearing out the walls in her office, I discovered an outlet (that I had removed and capped the wires because it wasn't powered) was fed by an indoor/outdoor extension cord. To make matters worse, about 2/3 of the way through the wall, the previous owner had spliced this to an indoor extension cord using packing tape as insulation. That cord was originally plugged in to an outlet in the utility room. Luckily, when we moved in, I couldn't figure out what it powered, so I unplugged it. Talk about a fire hazard!

 

[Nenu]

Take the new ram out, see if it improves.
Memory tests dont detect all problems.

 

[michalrz]

It may be a combination of two things.
I think you're way too close for comfort as far as UPS capacity goes, which causes the UPS to become less efficient and run out of A/C power for your PC.

Also, what do you mean by 'crash'? It powers down? Drops you to the desktop with an error message? Freezes?

It's probably the UPS if it powers down. Otherwise it may be the additional stick of RAM Nenu mentioned might be bad.

I've had RAM go bad and the fault was undetectable with memtest but manifested during prime95.

 

[Bandalo]

Oh yeah. Fortunately, this wiring is fairly straightforward. It's in the basement, and my wife's office is demolished. So I have access to everything. My suspicion is that it is the lack of a dedicated, quality ground. This house is old enough that all of the wiring is just two wires. I really want to get the basement re-wired.

When I was tearing out the walls in her office, I discovered an outlet (that I had removed and capped the wires because it wasn't powered) was fed by an indoor/outdoor extension cord. To make matters worse, about 2/3 of the way through the wall, the previous owner had spliced this to an indoor extension cord using packing tape as insulation. That cord was originally plugged in to an outlet in the utility room. Luckily, when we moved in, I couldn't figure out what it powered, so I unplugged it. Talk about a fire hazard!

Holy crap that would have me paranoid. I'd be tearing out ALL the walls to have the wiring checked if I found something like that!

 

[stormy1]

Sounds like years of power problems damaged the power supply which crumples under the higher power draw.

 

[stormy1]

The ups should beep if its overloaded.

 

[Bandalo]

The ups should beep if its overloaded.

Should.

 

[Brian_B]

Is it a Haswell build?

SLI build, yeah I could see going over a 650 VA UPS.

Rough rule of thumb, multiply VA by 0.8 and that gives you Watts. A Good power supply you can get by with 0.9, but I always just figure 0.8 on the safe side.

Also, unless the UPS has Voltage correction (APC calls it AVR), it may not do much for your power quality issue. If your smaller 650 had it, but your bigger 800 doesn't, that could be the issue.

Get a Kill-A-Watt, they are like $25 (higher end UPSes will have a Watt meter built in, if you just want to splurge a bit). Unless you are using some very top end video cards with heavy overclocks, I'd be surprised if the system is actually drawing much more than 600W total under full load with your SLI enabled and actually cranking.

Also, if you suspect it's home wiring - good chance it's dropping out when something else large starts up - A/C unit, Fridge, etc. Might be able to find out what the trigger is and help alleviate it from that end (and make everything better).

 

[Yippee38]

Take the new ram out, see if it improves.
Memory tests dont detect all problems.

It was crashing before I added the RAM. That's not to say that the new RAM isn't faulty, but if so, that's not the only problem.

It may be a combination of two things.
I think you're way too close for comfort as far as UPS capacity goes, which causes the UPS to become less efficient and run out of A/C power for your PC.

See below. I don't think I'm close to UPS capacity right now (not using SLI).

Also, what do you mean by 'crash'? It powers down? Drops you to the desktop with an error message? Freezes?

In ARK (the game she was playing most when the problem developed, she would get an in game error after the game froze. She'd also get BSoDs rarely.

Holy crap that would have me paranoid. I'd be tearing out ALL the walls to have the wiring checked if I found something like that!

Yeah. I replaced all of the outlets in my house. That was the only dodgy one, which is why I had capped the wires. The rest are quite obviously original. There's lots of other stupid stuff this guy did, but none that are actually scary.

Sounds like years of power problems damaged the power supply which crumples under the higher power draw.

Is there any way I could verify that? I've monitored the voltages on the various rails, and they are all withing normal tolerances. I wish there was a PSU tester that you could plug in to maybe a SATA connector or something that would give you an indication of PSU health and output.

Is it a Haswell build?

No. Z77 chipset

SLI build, yeah I could see going over a 650 VA UPS.

I removed the second video card. So it's only a single GTX 670.

Rough rule of thumb, multiply VA by 0.8 and that gives you Watts. A Good power supply you can get by with 0.9, but I always just figure 0.8 on the safe side.

I have a Kill-A-Watt EZ. Just tested it. Max wattage used when testing got up to around 270.

Also, unless the UPS has Voltage correction (APC calls it AVR), it may not do much for your power quality issue. If your smaller 650 had it, but your bigger 800 doesn't, that could be the issue.

Didn't think of that. However, it looks like the two UPS have the same lack of AVR. However, you may be on to something here. I'm running a CyberPower UPS also, but mine does have AVR. Hmmm.

I'm gonna put my UPS on her machine and test it. I'll let you all know what happens.

 

[Yippee38]

Didn't think of that. However, it looks like the two UPS have the same lack of AVR. However, you may be on to something here. I'm running a CyberPower UPS also, but mine does have AVR. Hmmm.

I'm gonna put my UPS on her machine and test it. I'll let you all know what happens.

Well, I tested it, and luckily, it crashed almost immediately. Now I know that AVR isn't the solution. Maybe it's not a power problem at all. Weird.