Funny power on/off behaviour i5 system

Soldato
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8 Jan 2010
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Bedford/Stavanger
As some may know I bought from ebay (only a month or two old) a complete i5 rig which I'm dead pleased with. Gigabyte UD5, H50 watercooler, 4GB corsair XMS3, Ati 5850. It all came in a horrific (imho:)) shiny nzxt case so last week I rehomed it in a cheap but nice enough looking Xigmatek Asgard. At the same time I decided to try my hand at overclocking to the 4GHz I always wanted (was going to get the OCUK overclocked bundle before I saw that lot on ebay).

A couple of times I experienced weird behaviour from the system. The case power button would either do nothing, or power on for a few seconds then power off. If just powered off, it might power on all by itself after a few seconds, only to power off again or proceed to boot. Two times when it booted it reported a bios checksum error (which scared the crap out of me) and then proceeded to recover its bios from somewhere (thank you dual bios, I guess) though it would be an old f3 version so I'd have to then flash it to the latest f9b to get my USB wireless dongle to work.

As I've changed the case and overclocked the CPU at the same time it's hard to say what the problem is, though obviously the smart money would go on noob (well - outdated at least) overclocking skills. However I'm not too sure.

Normally everything is fine and the overclock runs Prime95 for hours with no errors, temps nice and frosty thanks to the H50 and no crashes. When it first misbehaved, with the on-off-on-off thing I considered a funny power switch and noticed the power switch etc weren't fully plugged in to the mobo - must have tugged the cable slightly when 'managing' them so they were at an angle (nothing as bad as bent pins or anything though). I thought that might be the problem so plugged them in properly - still feel a bit loose though. Seemed to work OK, but the next day the power switch again did nothing initially, then eventually (i think after a total wall plug out power reset) did the off-on-off thing, and that was also the second time it did the bios recovery.

Have been running it for the last three days with the power switch/LEDs all disconnected (using the UD5's handy built in power button and windows shutdown) and have had no problems at all - the overclock seeming rock solid as normal.

So anyone reckon it could really be dodgy buttons on the case??? I've had a failed power switch before but not those same symptoms. I guess the next step is to try plugging in the case switches again and see if the problem returns. That might confirm the case. Can I really RMA a case - lol? Or is it overclock related, or maybe PSU? It's an 'evolabs' 800W which I've never heard of so probably does want changing for something quality, but could it really cause these symptoms?

Any help appreciated - cheers
 
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Is there an on button on the mobo? IF so just remove the case button lead and use that power the pc. see if it behaves the same way.

also now youve overclcoked the pc remove the oc and see if behaves the same way
 
Is there an on button on the mobo? IF so just remove the case button lead and use that power the pc. see if it behaves the same way.

also now youve overclcoked the pc remove the oc and see if behaves the same way

Yeah as I said been running with all the case buttons unplugged for the last few days and no problems. Just did 20 runs of IBT set to maximum stress. Got toastier than it does with Prime, but no errors. I'm really staring to think it can't be the overclock, unless it's something on the mobo that only shos up on power-up and not when warmed up and running??

Will plug the case buttons back in and see if the problem comes back - should confirm funny case buttons if it does. If it comes back will see if it goes away if I remove the overcloc -if it does I'l be back to being confused again :)
 
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