New build PC woes (three screens)

[mr_oily]

Arrrgh! Fired it up last night, got round to Surtees in the MX5 @ Brands and the thing fell over! Rules out a heat issue but the head scratching resumes.

[Wiltshire Tony]

PSU 

[spanner]

How did it fall over? lock up? restart? shutdown? crash to desktop?


You do have the latest drivers for the graphics card? Use the latest ATI drivers not the manufcaturers ones.

My last PSU was i think a 600watt one. I upgraded to an old i5 last feb and it slowly developed a few issues, programs minimising or locking up randomly, once i took the plunge and paid the money for my 850w its been pretty stable.

Do you have all monitors and pc plugged into a like a single extension lead? try to use as many sockets in the room as possible to distribute the load. Is it a filtered extension lead like the belkin ones? could be puting too much load through that.

[TinMan]

If you've ot any kind of decent wheel fitted it will take up (relatively) a lot of power. When I had this problem ages ago I bought a powered USB hub and it did the trick.

TC

[mr_oily]

Same as always Spanner - just freezes. The image freezes and I can hear my car hitting random objects and generally causing carnage (this isn't the time for smart comments Legz). THere's no control over the PC from that point though - NumLock lights etc don't work and it needs a reset.

Latest drivers - check! My PSU is 650W on the 12v rail which is a lot more than the last one and also more than it needs according to the ASUS power calculator. I am using a crappy extension lead though so I'll try plugging things in separately - good idea that man, thanks!

Really interesting point about the G25 TC - cheers for that one too. I've got a powered hub at home so I'll plug that back in and see what effect it has. I saw 7 Watts or something it can pull - would be good to eliminate it anyway.

Cheers again all - determined to nail this!

[Legzy]

...and I can hear my car hitting random objects and generally causing carnage (this isn't the time for smart comments Legz).

Mate, I wouldn't dream of kicking you while you're down .
I've honestly not had a whole host of smart remarks queued up for this thread since reading your opening statement .
No thought of it being your PC protesting about the standard or speed of your driving, ever entered my mind .
Not one thought about it being the nut behind the wheel .
No thought of that old viral email joke, the one where the bloke kept having power cuts & was wondering why his PC was going off, who was then told by IT support to pack the PC back into it's box & return to sender because he was obviously too stupid to own a PC... 

I'm hurt you'd think so lowly of me, how childish & insensitive do you think I am?

[spanner]

http://aphnetworks.com/reports/ocz_zt_series_650w

My initial look at at the PSU does raise some questions. Its only got a single 12v rail rated at 648w however the whole PSU including the +3.3v & 5v and -12v lines is rated to 650w. And your always using 3.3v and 5v on the motherboard, USB devices are 5v. All drives use 5v and 12v, SATA drives use 3.3, 5 & 12v , The cpu requires an additonal 12v connector for additional power plus you have the graphics card power requirements which could be anything upto 250-300w max. With the total max of the PSU being 650w you will never be able to fully use the 12v line to its max capacity, at a guess you might have already dropped that by 100w generrally to start with when under load not to mention the cpu will be around 80-90w ( arnt they rated at 95w and making an estimate for usage)

Not to mention if your o/c it

Power supplyies dont tend to be too efficient when running close to 100 load either, yours is more efficient at 50% load than at either 100% or at 20% so it always helps to choose a psu with plenty of headroom so it will be more efficient.


Just my opinion ofcourse, i've tended to learn it the hard way, i've always looked at the online power calaculators which say its all fine then once i've fitted a better psu it all runs ok!. But i'm happy if somone has other opinions.

[Burtoner]

hmm i got same system pretty much.

Not had any problems...

[spanner]

CHANGE THE POWER SUPPLY!

[BadBlood]

He is right! Change the PSU. It might not be the PSU but it is the most likely cause. You can pick up a cheap PSU to test and load it up slowly if you are feeling mean! I got an EZ-Cool for £10 to test and it showed that this was where my issue was. My situation was where my PC would not start up properly (it would P.O.S.T and then re-boot spontaneously and Windows went into auto-recovery) but once it was up it was OK. Most odd but it was the PSU. Got a German quiet job 750W PSU for £60 from ebuyer - it is excellent. The brand is BeQuiet who I had never heard of but it was recommended to me and it is very good.