[ben504]

I recently bought a number of components from ebuyer and built my new pc (and had it checked prior to power on by a professional). I have had no problems with it until the last 10 days, during which is has been randomly powering off becoming more and more frequent. Power is cut as if the plug has been pulled from the wall (which is hasn’t!), occasionally the monitor goes off fans run at full speed and the PC then dies as above. After looking on the internet on too many forums it seems that it may be the PSU or mo/bo but there i cant seem to find anything concrete relating to a similar system.

So far i have checked all the seatings of componants on the mo/bo and all pwoer connectors both in and out the case... temp is not an issue as there is no dust and i added a mid range CPU cooler!

Any help you guys could give me with this one would be great! Is it faulty hardware? Or just drivers? If it is the mo/bo why would it power on and work for a certain amount of time then die? I have also emailed the company i bought from to ask them what their opinion.

System Info

ASUS P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Socket 775
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Socket 775
EVGA 9800GT 1GB PCI-E
Sumvision 650W PowerX PSU SATA (30A +12v rail)
Crucial 2GB kit (2x1GB) DDR2 (x2)
Vista Home Premium 32-bit
USB mouse + keyboard

Thanks for any help!

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Hello ben504...

The symptoms you describe are classic for a bad power supply. However, I have seen overheating processors cause nearly the same symptoms. The main difference is that usually a hot processor will recover with a "thermal event" warning on startup.

Do you have access to a known good power supply that you can use to see if the problem persists with a different psu?

wannabe1

[wannabe1]

Hello ben504...

The symptoms you describe are classic for a bad power supply. However, I have seen overheating processors cause nearly the same symptoms. The main difference is that usually a hot processor will recover with a "thermal event" warning on startup.

Do you have access to a known good power supply that you can use to see if the problem persists with a different psu?

wannabe1

[ben504]

Thanks for the rapid reply wannabe1...!

Currently i dont have a spare PSU to try but i will see if i can get my hands on one to test it with and then report back with the results...

Also im guessing that it isnt a thermal problem, im using a Artic Pro 7 cooler on my CPU and the case itself has two 120mm fans built in, system normally runs steady on 45-50C which i presume is a standerd temp for quad core? Mo/Bo normally runs at 40C

What wattage PSU would you reccomend for this system?

ben

[wannabe1]

650 Watts should be plenty as the system is configured now. If you plan to add more hardware...say, another video card (SLI)...you might want to bump it up to a 750 Watt. Take a look at the Corsair line of power supplies, I've really taken a shine to them. Powerful, cool, and efficient.

[ben504]

Hey wannabe,

Just to give you some feedback (sorry its taken sooo long, im a poor poor student lol) I asked around on a number fo other sites and they all said similar to your solution, I have just bought and installed an brand new OCZ 600W PSU in my system and soo far (2hrs) it hasnt powered off... Ill post again tomoz as im planning on leaving it on all day to see if it powers off!

Genuinly, Thanks for you help!

Ben