SERIOUSLY ANNOYING POWER PROBLEM !! HELP ASAP ! WHERE AM I GOING WRONG?

Hey all this pc I have keeps randomly cutting power then restarting, specs are:

Asus P8B-X V1.0 – Latest Bios
Intel Xeon E3-1270
32 GB ECC Unbuffered DDR3, 4x8gb dims
2x 60gb SSD drives on Intel on board RAID 1 mirroring
6x SATA drives on intel chipset (4 physical ports)
LSI Logic SAS3444E 3Gb/s SAS PCI-E Controller, 2 remaining sata drives on this.
2 x Fujitsu 147 GB,Internal,15000 RPM SAS drives on 2 remaining ports on SAS controller card running RAID 0 (scratch disk)
Zalman ZM1000-HP 1000W Heat Pipe Cooled Quiet 80Plus - Modular Power Supply PSU
ATI RADEON 7850 Graphics 2gb PCI-E x16 (6 pin power plug)

The system is setup for a RAID 1 on the main system drive, 6 SATA drives are a storage pool under windows 8 pro.

The SAS drives are on the main SATA power rail on there own, all other drives are powered by separate SATA cables/different rail from the PSU.
The SAS drives are a scratch disk, pc is used for editing video and pictures.

Whats going wrong is, the PC will just cut out the power at RANDOM times, for example it will boot to Windows 8 desktop and cut out after 1 minute or boot, does stuff, use pc for 30 mins and then it randomly cuts out, its never really ran for more than 20-30 mins before cutting off.

Once it cuts out, the pc is 'dead' for 2 seconds then it just boots itself and powers up again.

HELP, why is it doing this ??! The PSU should be plenty to power that?!

Sounds like something is either faulty and the machine is rejecting it, or it's shorting out.

What branding is the RAM?

Have you tried another PSU? The reason I ask is a friend of mine had the same PSU and it ran fine for about 5 months then suddenly started causing the system to randomly reboot.

Crisp89 said:

Sounds like something is either faulty and the machine is rejecting it, or it's shorting out.

What branding is the RAM?

Click to expand...

Tried it with single stick micron 2gb, same, and now Elpida EDJ4208EASE-DJ-F is the main ram , same

Memory tests come out with no issues.


On my 2nd PSU now, used a 550watt ocz one running ONLY the ram, cpu and graphics card (ati radeon 7850 2gb) and it did the same with that, random cut outs, this is a zalman, so GOOD makes, the PSU's run fine for days in another test pc

Mine did that for a while - turned out to be a loose connection in the 24 pin plug. I bent it slightly to improve contact and the problem went away. Someone on here suggested that as the fix - but I can't remember who

Well, figured it out now, running the software 'HW Monitor' causes it to cut out, not running that software its just primed for 5 hours no problems, weird.

Glad you sorted it, mine is still messed lol

Windows 8 is evil...

Spoke to soon, started randomly happening again any ideas?

Does event viewer show anything at the time of the cut? If not, it's a hardware issue.

I'd remove all ram, then memtest them one by one. Maybe try raising the ram voltage a tiny bit.

bledd. said:

Does event viewer show anything at the time of the cut? If not, it's a hardware issue.

I'd remove all ram, then memtest them one by one. Maybe try raising the ram voltage a tiny bit.

Click to expand...

Ok cool, im running memtest off a boot cd now and will leave it for a few hours, I have a strange question, will the 2x 15k SAS drives have anything to do with it ? they are running off the main sata power cable with a converter plug to fit sas drives, the data cable is in the pci-e card

I cant change voltages for anything on the board, its a Asus P8B-X V1.0

You mentioned the old PSU did the same with only your board, mem, cpu and graphics card. Now that you've ruled out the PSU (and mem?) shouldn't you be looking at the remaining components? Can you take out the 7850 and run it with the onboard?

Hmmm currently 51% through mem test, no errors 1.5 hours so far...........im thinking its not going to restart, likely a windows 8 to hardware issue?

Ok I have a working theory, I went into the system logs and found the critical errors that all happened at the time the pc shut off.

It was 'Critical Kernel-Power, Event ID 41, Task 63'

Many googles later it seems a few people have this issue with window 7/8 kernals, and they solved their issue by upping the voltages of the components slightly in the bios, im guessing why this worked is something to perhaps do with V-Drop ? with the CPU throttling and the bios adjusting the CPU volt at different speeds, I guess if this drops to low the system will cut power? (anyone got any thoughts on this).

It would also explain why I could prime the system for 5 hours last night in windows, running prime loaded the cpu and so it was fed more volts.

What you think people ? Only 1 problem with this............as its server board I cannot change the CPU/System voltages in the bios !!!! , im thinking I can only try disabling cpu power saving features? Any thoughts on this would be great.....im writing this on the pc now, with prime running, so far, no hangs

Ok it's early days yet but I *THINK* iv nailed it, disabled speed step, disabled ALL C1e, c3 c6 power states and rebooted, and before its cpu voltage reading from cpuz was fluctuating wildly between 1.008 and 1.256v dependent on cpu load now its just static at 1.256v and SO FAR its not hung, I left it doing nothing for 10 mins with cpu use at 0 to 1% (where it previously would have V-dropped) and it hasn't hung, still working, so now transferring the files I need over to it from the network, and that isnt really using any cpu power so ill see how long it lasts...............if this has solved it then its the power saving features cutting the power incorrectly, im writing all this in case anyone in the future has this problem.

Well ive got a new psu rocking up tomorrow with a replacement cooler and thermal paste hopefully this will sort my issue, I will strip out the stuff tonight and install them tomorrow after work and keep you posted how I get on

wlsmith1985 said:

Well ive got a new psu rocking up tomorrow with a replacement cooler and thermal paste hopefully this will sort my issue, I will strip out the stuff tonight and install them tomorrow after work and keep you posted how I get on

Click to expand...

Sounds good smith in happy to help if u have issues, post here or email me if it does do it, weirdly run prime 95 and if it doesn't reboot its same issue as mine.

Still running, its defo 100% the above, problem solved

i noticed my voltage does fluctuate when looking in cpu-z, i will put these new bits in anyway see how i get on then have a mess around with the voltages, on the z77 mpower it doesnt have any specific option values to select you have to enter them manually any ideas on the settings?

do you get blue screen before restarting?