Hardware Sometimes PC crashes - PSU Issue?

Mick

Mick

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Not often but sometimes the PC will just shut down, it can be really annoying at times, and seems to be when I need to save something lol.

My question is would this be the PSU?

Well that is my guess, but I have no idea and I can imagine it can be one of them it might be anything answers coming ;)

However I bought the PC from ebay about a year or so ago and I think it has a cheap PSU, I do not do gaming (sometimes my daughter plays these roblox games)... just browsing/server admin stuff and occasional photoshop/illustrator use.

Most times it happens is when the PC first loads up, then will shut down, also sometimes it will not turn on and I have to remove the power from the PSU for about 10 seconds then comes on again?

Cheers all

Mick
 
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whats the wattage of psu

bigger always the best option

most will run ok with 450 to 500 w for simple browsing etc

my psu is 850w
 
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It does sound like PSU issue.

If you are going to change it then the cheapest PSU I would recommend is XFX Pro Core Edition, plenty of connections and dead quiet and 5 year warranty. It will last you plenty of updates in the future.

550W XFX Pro Core Edition 80PLUS Bronze Power Supply [P1-550S-XXB9] - Aria Technology


Sorry but don't buy into this myth that you need a huge PSU, good quality budget 450W will be much better then cheap 850w. Unless you have a high end graphics card then 450W will be sufficient for £35 + p&p. Else there are more powerful options available. The following is a page you can enter your system details and it will work out how big a CPU is. Add on around 20% in the last field if you plan on keeping the PSU at least 5 years.

eXtreme Outer Vision - eXtreme tools for computer enthusiasts
 
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alimac said:
whats the wattage of psu

bigger always the best option

most will run ok with 450 to 500 w for simple browsing etc

my psu is 850w
Click to expand...

Not always sometimes its just what you need... when you have a low profile graphic card and just one hard drive you'd come easy with 350-500W psu Its useless to have excess amount of wattage.
 
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alimac said:
...
bigger always the best option
...
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. See below.
oneman said:
...
Sorry but don't buy into this myth that you need a huge PSU, good quality budget 450W will be much better then cheap 850w. Unless you have a high end graphics card then 450W will be sufficient for £35 + p&p. Else there are more powerful options available. The following is a page you can enter your system details and it will work out how big a CPU is. Add on around 20% in the last field if you plan on keeping the PSU at least 5 years.

eXtreme Outer Vision - eXtreme tools for computer enthusiasts
Click to expand...
Agreed, and too big a PSU will run less efficiently at smaller loads than a lower wattage PSU. Less efficient = more heat + wasted electricity.

IIRC general consensus is to aim for a 40-60% load at idle, or about 80% load at peak. The overhead on the peak value allowing for capacitor aging.
 
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Just a thought !

Heat CPU temp related ?

Had this myself PC shutting down as the CPU reaches the pre determined temperature set in the bios. With the hot weather bringing up the ambient temp. Worth a look in the bios.
 
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Cheers all investigating tomorrow not long home...

Will purchase a better psu as well, Want a SSD too
 
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make sure the psu you get has a strong 12v rail. some so called 700 watt psu actually has less than half on the 12 rail
 
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Ive recently had this problem resulting in having to buy a new pc but i initially thought at first it was my psu so brought a new one and swapped it out with the new psu anyway i had the same problems.So done a bit more investigating in the end it was the capacitors on the mobo.So if it isn't your psu then have a look around your mobo for bad caps.Its prob the last option to look at but always worth looking into.As this was my last option after changing the psu and putting new thermal paste on the cpu and checking ram.So always keep your options open.
 
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I ran a PC repair business for some years. Normally PSU's either work or they don't, very rarely do they cause other problems. First thing to do is open the computer case and check all fans including the psu one are able to turn and not siezed or if full of muck, clean with compressed air or a brush. Then examine the capacitors on the main board, any with the tops even slightly domed are ****ed and can cause all sorts of problems. I've changed lots of capacitors but am good at that and have the tools. Here is a typical example.
Code: 
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That covers 95% of the problems of this kind. Of course PSU's have capacitors in them that may age but given the cost of a new power unit its not worth fixing them. Replace.
 
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pathere said:
I ran a PC repair business for some years. Normally PSU's either work or they don't, very rarely do they cause other problems. First thing to do is open the computer case and check all fans including the psu one are able to turn and not siezed or if full of muck, clean with compressed air or a brush. Then examine the capacitors on the main board, any with the tops even slightly domed are ****ed and can cause all sorts of problems. I've changed lots of capacitors but am good at that and have the tools. Here is a typical example. http://chrismeyer.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/DSC07131.JPG That covers 95% of the problems of this kind. Of course PSU's have capacitors in them that may age but given the cost of a new power unit its not worth fixing them. Replace.
Click to expand...

Ouch!! I take it that's a fairly extreme example? I've seen plenty of bulging cap's over the years, even the occasional leaking one, but those are quite ugly! Plus of course you can get duff ones that look perfectly OK, it's down to the ESR tester to root those ones out :)
 
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We have a couple of customers that use a lot of the same model of pc's both in excess of 2000 units each, one uses HP and the other Dell, all bought at the same time about 3.5/4 years ago and both customers pc's are showing various problems and all are to do with leaking or blown caps.

will not power on, fans on all the time, if reboot just goes to bios screen and no further, keeps powering off for no reason.

i suspect HP/Dell system board manufacturers bought a load of dud caps.

it is now the first thing i look for on any call.

in my experience of working in IT very few faults end up being the psu unless they are driven over the spec, as said in previous post they either work or they don't.
 
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Hi pathere, don't be to eager to dismiss PSU's as either all working or nothing. I had a Asus i7 built PC running Autodesk Revit that would spontaniously reboot, so swapped out the Ram, new cooler, checked the pins on CPU socket, changed graphics card and finally swapped out the PSU. You guessed it the bloody PSU was the problem. I'm old school like you and never ever would have considered it. I recall when I use to run the windows benchmark it would crash when it started to utilise the graphics processing unit as part of this test causing it to overload the PSU.

pathere said:
I ran a PC repair business for some years. Normally PSU's either work or they don't, very rarely do they cause other problems. First thing to do is open the computer case and check all fans including the psu one are able to turn and not siezed or if full of muck, clean with compressed air or a brush. Then examine the capacitors on the main board, any with the tops even slightly domed are ****ed and can cause all sorts of problems. I've changed lots of capacitors but am good at that and have the tools. Here is a typical example.
Code: 
You don't have permission to view the code content. Log in or register now.
That covers 95% of the problems of this kind. Of course PSU's have capacitors in them that may age but given the cost of a new power unit its not worth fixing them. Replace.
Click to expand...
 
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I find a lot of people make the mistake of buying a 800 psu without looking at the rails . a lot have about 400 watts 12v and the rest made up from 3.3 v and 5 v
always buy a true watt psu
 
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Thanks all for the Info and replies :).

I have not had much trouble lately from the PC so have left it for the time.

If it does start all that again, I will change the PSU :)

Thanks again all.

Mick
 
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rapha said:
Hi pathere, don't be to eager to dismiss PSU's as either all working or nothing.
Click to expand...

My comments are based on a large sample of commercially made computers where the PSU is correctly sized for the machine and not subject to stress from the (high and variable) load of a hefty GPU. I recall one PSU that caused intermittent problems. Thats greatly outnumbered by capacitors on main boards where I've changed around 100, including IBM ones as they had a model that suffered capacitor death within the warranty period. So naturally I look for that first However with satellite receivers the 12v power units that come with DM500s receivers do cause random lockups.
 
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