Dead PSU?

wichall · 19 Aug 2010 at 15:57

I've had a problem with the output of my graphics card for a long time, it switches between the two ports. The problem is that all black pixels will suddenly flicker blue until i turn off the monitor and back on again (this happens on both of my monitors and both of my ports on my graphics card)

That problem isn't really an issue, but it may be connected to my big issue.

The problem is that I can no longer copy lots of data from any hard drive to any hard drive (SATA or Firewire).

The copy process (both in explore and TeraCopy) will just get stuck on any random file.

Along with this, if I'm watching a long video, suddenly the video will freeze for about 10-20 seconds, I'll hear all my hard drives spin back up and then it will play again from where it left off...

Does this sound like a dodgy PSU to you guys?

RJC · 19 Aug 2010 at 16:16

What are your full specs and PSU wattage and make.

wichall · 19 Aug 2010 at 16:24

Here you go:

PSU:
Thermaltake ToughPower 1200W Modular Power Supply

Mobo:
MSI motherboard 790FX-GD70 AMD AM3 DDR3 ATX

CPU:
AMD CPU AM3 Phenom II X4 955 quad core 3.2GHz x4 Black Edition

RAM:
Corsair XMS3 DHX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600C9DHX Twin3X

Graphics Card:
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)

Sound Card:
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty with Front panel connected

2 80GB SATA WD Raptors
4 other Seagates varying in size up to 1TB
1 WD FW400 1TB External MyBook
2 DVD-RW Drives

Grimley · 19 Aug 2010 at 16:34

Your issues don't point to a faulty PSU to me, seems more like a motherboard issue. Your PSU shouldn't even break a sweat running your rig.

wichall · 19 Aug 2010 at 16:47

Yeah but things can still break

Any idea how I can run some tests on the motherboard to see which one's the culprit without swapping parts?

I've got an old 600W PSU lying around, will that handle my spec, to test, do you think?

Grimley · 19 Aug 2010 at 17:09

Yep, try it. Its not going to cost you any money to do this.

wichall · 19 Aug 2010 at 17:19

I'll try it when I next get a chance then...

Out of interest, does nothing exist to diagnostically test PSUs and Mobos for faults? I've been looking around for a while but found nothing useful other than benchmarking software, but I have no idea what I should be comparing the benchmarks to...