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System freezing, no boot device after reboot.


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#1
Levi Miller

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I'm having an issue with a system I built. It periodically locks up and reboots itself.
Upon reboot it cannot find a boot device. If I power it off manually and restart it works fine again.
Sometimes it works for 4+ hours, sometimes 30 mins. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with work load.
I can actually hear the HD stop spinning and about 15 seconds later, crash.

I recently upgraded the Mobo, chip, ram, and installed a SSD and installed the Win7 on it... same problem.
Obviously I can't hear the HD stop spinning anymore because of SSD but what's the issue here?

Thanks
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#2
phillpower2

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The PSU may be the cause, what is the brand and output of the present PSU please.
Download Speedfan and install it. Once it's installed, run the program and post here the information it shows. The information I want you to post is the stuff that is circled in the example picture I have attached.If you are running on a vista machine, please go to where you installed the program and run the program as administrator.

Posted Image
(this is a screenshot from a vista machine)

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#3
Levi Miller

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http://imgur.com/iNWSn

My current PSU is a 550w Fatal1ty.
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#4
phillpower2

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Temps are shown as being very high and the +12V on the PSU very low, we need to confirm these readings as best we can so download and run HWMonitor http://www.cpuid.com.../hwmonitor.html and again post a screenshot.
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#5
Levi Miller

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http://imgur.com/QLMFW

The SSD looks like it's running really hot. OCZ says "Operating Temp: 0°C ~ 70°C"

Also, my CPU fans are barely running for some reason. I thought I had them set to max, no throttling. I have a corsair liquid cooler on the chip but maybe I should go with an air cooling solution. When I first installed all the new stuff you could smell Ozone at boot up each time. It's stopped now, and this problem existed before the upgrade.

Should I try to install a higher watt PSU and see if that helps?
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#6
phillpower2

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These types of software can sometimes show anomalous readings but 2 reporting the same high temps is no coincidence and suggests a problem, the heat could be caused by too much voltage.

Also, my CPU fans are barely running for some reason.

Try manually setting the fan speed in Speedfan.

I have a corsair liquid cooler on the chip but maybe I should go with an air cooling solution.

This is a separate issue but not using the stock cooler and fan supplied with a CPU invalidates your CPUs warranty.

Should I try to install a higher watt PSU and see if that helps?

Yes if you have one, borrow a known good one if you don`t have one.
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#7
Digerati

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Did you use TIM (thermal interface material) when mounting that cooler?

The +12 voltage being that far off is probably just a faulty sensor a Win7 bug in interpreting it. That seems to be a common problem (on my system too) but it is not likely your system would run if the +12V was that far off. You can verify voltages in the BIOS Setup Menu. You can check temps there too with many boards, but that is not reliable because running the BIOS Setup Menu is about the least demanding task we can ask of our computers.

I agree to get a known good PSU in there. To me, verifying I have good power is almost always the first step in troubleshooting, even if I don't suspect a power issue.

Still, these are classic heat symptoms and 85°C is scary high for me - if true.
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#8
Levi Miller

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The temps haven't changed in testing, but my BIOS says the CPU temp is 27ºC. I think I trust the BIOS more at this point. Just to be sure I scraped off the old stuff and put some Arctic Silver 5 on the chip. No change.

The OCZ drive still says 128ºC and never wavers. I swapped power cables on the drive and no change.

In BIOS it appears my 12v is a little high at 12.288. Should this be a concern? Is it +/- .5 or .05? I don't know the tolerance on this type of hardware.

I have a friend that's going to let me use an extra 1000watt PSU he has to test next week.

For now I'm thinking all the temp stuff is extraneous and there's something else wrong.
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#9
Digerati

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Your tolerances are good as seen here:


Posted Image
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#10
Levi Miller

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Thanks guys,

So any ideas on what else could be causing the strange behavior or do you guys still think it's power?

It looks like the CPU temp actually drops if I let the system run a while to ~70ºC which is still high but could just be Win7 being weird.
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#11
phillpower2

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As Digerati has said ensuring that you have good, clean stable power is a must and primarily the first thing checked when you start having issues, there is no harm done replacing a good power supply with another known good power supply but quite the opposite if you don`t at least make sure.
You said in a previous post that your fans were running slow so I suggested that you manually turn them up, here is a tutorial that I found that shows what can be done with Speedfan albeit that the guy is using an MSI MB http://forum-en.msi....?topic=109858.0
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#12
Levi Miller

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Alright, it lasted almost a whole day without crashing since my last "adjustment" (in which I basically changed nothing).

So tonight I replaced the PSU with a brand new one, same watt, we will see if it helps.
Temps look essentially the same.

Edited by Levi Miller, 31 October 2011 - 09:49 PM.

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#13
phillpower2

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Thank you for the update, have you tried increasing the fan speeds as I suggested?
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#14
Levi Miller

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So, I've replaced the PSU and haven't had a crash yet.
I used Speedfan to crank up the fan speeds (at least I think I did) but I don't hear a difference or see a change in temps.


Posted Image

Still no crashes, but this morning the temps dropped a lot.

Posted Image

Edited by Levi Miller, 03 November 2011 - 09:47 AM.

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#15
phillpower2

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Thank you for the update, temps do look a lot more acceptable, how did you adjust the fan speeds, did you use the link for guidance http://forum-en.msi....?topic=109858.0 and make sure the Speedfan Auto setting box is not checked.

NB: Did you notice that there are less Aux fans listed in the second screenshot :)
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