Overloaded my Seasonic S12?

Aeria · Post by **Aeria** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 4:51 am

Yesterday I was playing a game on my pc when it restarted without warning.
After this it would not boot into windows, restarting at some point during the boot every time. I tried running memtest and found the pc would reboot (without showing errors) within a few minutes every time.
After removing the sound card, trying different ram and swapping the graphics card for a much older pci card, there was no improvement.
Next, I tried replacing the psu with an old Engermax 470w, an found that it booted fine!
After running memtest for a couple of passes I added back the sound card and the 8800 and it still booted fine.
From this I'm forced to conclude that my Season S12 430w psu has failed; but I wonder, might it have failed anyway or was I putting too much strain on it?

My specs: e6400, 2*2GB OCZ PC6400, Gigabyte 965-P DS3 Rev.1, PNY 8800gts 512MB, Samsung Spinpoint 500GB, generic dvd-rw, Seasonic S12 430w, P180.
Nothing overclocked.

I was thinking of this:http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1754.html as a replacement psu.

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 7:50 am

You certainly did not overload your power supply; that system is probably drawing around 175 watts at full load. However, that's not to say the power supply didn't fail for unrelated reasons; it's not unheard of. Contact Seasonic and see what they can do for you.

Aeria · Post by **Aeria** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 3:45 am

Well, I've contacted Seasonic to ask for an RMA. I suppose this could take a while and I don't want to be without a PC for 2 weeks or more, plus I'm not too trusting of this particular model of PSU now that one's died on me so I think I might buy a new one anyway. Would the psu linked above be serious overkill? If so, what might be a better alternative?

mexell · Post by **mexell** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 4:04 am

Yes, that's serious overkill. Get something smaller, like a Seasonic M12II-430, a Corsair VX450 or an Antec NeoHE 430.

Btw. I'm running a Q9300, Radeon 4850, two harddrive system on the same mainboard (except the revision - yours is 1, mine is 3.3) that you have off a Seasonic S12II-430.

Aeria · Post by **Aeria** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 4:49 am

Thanks for the advice. I've ordered a Corsair VX 450W.

mexell · Post by **mexell** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 5:00 am

That's a good choice, congrats on that. I assume you will be happy with it.

Aeria · Post by **Aeria** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:19 am

Well I've got the new power supply installed and now it's getting into windows fine, but it reboots after playing a game for a while

Phantomstrider · Post by **Phantomstrider** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:29 am

Sometimes, a power supply is just faulty and needs to be replaced by either the store you bought it from or the manufacturer.

Actually, the store I work at sells Seasonic S12 430w and so far out of the 3 we've sold, 2 of them have been returned to us marked as faulty. Maybe this particular model is a bad batch or just a bad model? I'm thinking of going to 550w with mine but it'd be serious overkill..

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 4:50 am

The power supply has already been replaced, so that's not the issue. If you're running undervolted, bump back up to stock volts and see if the problem persists. As components age, they need more power to run correctly; from the factory there's plenty of overhead for more than a decade of hard use, but undervolting removes this overhead. After just a few years of light use, you might need to back off the undervolt.

My next guess would be RAM - run something to test it. Orthos or Prime95 should work, but the best choice would be a Memtest86 LiveCD. If Memtest86 can't run for 24+ hours without a single error, you need to check your RAM - either make sure the speeds are correct or get new stuff.

Aeria · Post by **Aeria** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:24 am

Ok I ran memtest for 12 hours without errors, but it's still rebooting during games, and also in cpu stress tests like Orthos.

mexell · Post by **mexell** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:33 am

Unspecific hardware errors tend to be difficult to diagnose. Over years my computer only booted at the second attempt - over time, everything changed, and the cause was - the harddrive (just to be clear, that's just an anecdote and not a guess in any direction).

You might also have temperature problems, or something like aging of some circuitry on your mainboard.

Try narrowing in the cause with as much different hardware combinations as possible. As I have said in the beginning, errors like the one you encounter can have a very hard to find reason.

At least, high load problems don't usually point towards software errors, so you know where not to start searching.

Sad to say, but you seem to be stuck in the only case where building the computer yourself doesn't pay off, that's unspecific hardware errors. Under a complete system warranty, they would exchange the mainboard and PSU just to be sure.

The candidates for me are: PSU (you already checked that), Graphics card, mainboard.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:52 am

Hello,

If you are running MemTest X86 from a CD-ROM, and not getting errors, but you are getting crashes in Windows, then it could be your hard drive, or it could be Windows (clean the Registry!).

Phantomstrider · Post by **Phantomstrider** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 5:38 pm

Actually for this sorta problem I'd say it'd be the graphics card rather than the Power supply or motherboard. Try re-installing the graphic drivers first, then try another graphics card.

Oh yeah. And also check your event log to find the cause of the error, plus make sure your system isn't set to automatically reset on errors.

Aeria · Post by **Aeria** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:11 pm

I got a new motherboard (GA-P31-DS3L) and reinstalled Vista. So far everything seems fine, able to play games/run stress tests no problem. Oh and I had a look at power consumption, it's 120w idle and 219w at absolute full load.