Having some weird issues.

Wayne-O23

Wayne-O23

Wayne-O23

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Joined
30 Mar 2009
Posts
27
Good morning everyone, hope your all coping well during these unusual days.

I am having a small problem with my computer at the moment. I've now had the system 3 years now, and moved house twice with it (not sure if this is relevant).

I started having some very odd issues a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure what the problem is and struggling to pinpoint whats causing the problem, i'll describe now as best i can whats happening -

Last night i was playing a game (Euro truck sim), after a couple hours the radio stream ingame stopped, and once it stopped i noticed my Water cooling fans on the cpu speeding up, not upto max, but pretty high. I switched off the game and went to windows to see what was happening. I noticed the internet connection had been lost. There was no way for me to re-connect so i turned the computer off, this is where it gets odd, i couldn't switch the computer back on. I turned the PSU off and left for a few mins, turned back on and the computer fired up fine again.

This has happened once before when i went out for a couple hours and lef tthe computer on downloading some updates on games. When i got back home the screen looked different, almost as if the computer restarted itself. So again i checked the event viewer to no avail, switched the computer off and again it wouldnt switch back on until i switched the psu off for a few minutes.

I'm really not sure where to start, i mean all the temps inside seem fine, but i do notice my CPU go under like 25% load for like 3 seconds then back to normal (guessing something in the background of windows causing this).

The only things i can think is maybe the PSU failing and not supplying enough power, or something wrong with the motherboard (only thinking this because of losing internet connection randomly).

If anyone could help with this or experienced something similar i would love to be able to get it sorted. Thank you all in advance, and any other information you need just ask and i will get asap. Cheers.
 
Joxeon said:
Could well be the psu on its way out or the motherboard, could also be your overclock becoming unstable due to degradation over time although you should be able to rule this out by either lowering the clocks by 0.1 or upping the voltage slightly.
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Hello, thank you for your reply, my first thought was the PSU, but wheni noticed the internet getting disconnected i then thought that it could be the motherboard. I had the system overclocked from the company, there is a lot of testing software saved on the system. Would i adjust the clocks through the bios? Or would you think the company have used one of the programs to overclock, and therefore to also use one of these to adjust the clocks/voltage? Thank you.
 
And EsaT i haven't tried running at stock yet, only last night did i decide that i need to get this sorted. Is there a quick method of reverting it all back to default settings? I haven't monitored the CPU temps while its happening, but have coretemp running in the background, and minimum was around 32 degrees, and maxed out last night at 58 degrees. When i was sat on windows after shutting down the game, the cpu would load would jump by around 25% then drop within a few seconds, but forgot to check the task manager to see if something was causing these spikes.

One thing i should add, when it first happened a few weeks ago, the water cooler was very loud (as if air bubbles were trapped in the system) but the temps were all the same as usual. I did a bit of research and managed to get the noise back to normal. I'm not sure if when it crashed that the coolant just stopped where it was causing the ait to trap in the wrong place, and after some work the bubbles worked their way back to the rad. This might be completely unrelated, but thought it might be worth mentioning. Thank you.
 
Ok, i just opened the XTU program, intel's extreme tuning utility. Went for the basic test and got a BSOD, with the code 'Clock Watchdog Timeout'. Not sure if this would help identify the problem?
 
Joxeon said:
Have a look in the bios at what the cpu multipier is set too, if it says 50 then change this to 49 save and exit. then run the test.
Click to expand...

Hello, ok i just did what you said, ran the tes and no BSOD, so thanks for that, feels like a step closer. Can you explain what that actually did, and what made you think of switching the multiplier down to 49? Thank you
 
Joxeon said:
the CPU was set to run at 5ghz which is an overclock but over time a cpu can degrade so that an overclock becomes unstable, what you just did was reduce the overclock speed to 4.9ghz which wont make much difference in terms of performance but can have a big impact on stability.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much, do i need to change anything else to keep it stable? Voltages or anything? If i reduced the multiplier further to help in the long run will i then have to adjust voltages? Also any other tests i can do to check stability? And finally, could that have caused the problems that i mentioned in the original post? Unusual heavy cpu load, internet disconnecting and having to wait 5 mins to be able to switch back on? Thanks again.
 
Ok, just been doing some usual things on the computer for the past 30mins, everything seemed all good. So i thought i would try switching it off and see if it would switch back on, and unfortunately not, i had to wait a few minutes with it switched off before it would turn back on. Could this still be the CPU causing problems? Or would it be worth getting and trying a new PSU?
 
BUDFORCE said:
That is a bit odd.

When you say won't turn back on, is it trying to boot, as in, do they fans and lights all turn on, just nothing on screen?

Or is it completely dead until you have the power supply off for a while?

Reason being some BIOS will try and boot multiple times to run with your overclock settings and it might be making many attempts to start but you might not realise it's doing this.

That would keep it on the overclock track.

If you have the overclock settings saved somewhere, just load up the optimised default in the bios and still if it still happens, would rule that out completely.
Click to expand...

Hello, nah, when i try to switch it on, nothing happens at all, no lights or sounds. It is off for maybe 3 mins before it will fire up when i press the button.

I feel like im getting closer to the root cause, but not quite. I tried loading the intel extreme tuning utility just now, and got an error pop up about 'watchdog not working, or failed to load.

I will try going into bios now, saving the profile and loading up default settings and see if it helps. If i set the bios to default, will everything that was changed be reverted? Thank you.
 
BUDFORCE said:
Yup optimised default will make everything back to standard "safe" level provided you have your overclock settings saved it's worth a try first.
Click to expand...

Ok, so i set the bios back to default and saved both profiles, and using default at the moment. So i thought i would switch my computer off again to see if it would switch on, but same problem again, but had to leave it off for a good 5 minutes this time before it owuld let me switch it back on. Is that safe to say the overclock wasn't causing the problem? Or could there still be a problem with the CPU? Thanks in advance again.
 
I keep thinking the PSU, but for some reason havent tried another. The one i have now is an EVGA 750GQ 750W Gold Rated PSU. It's now just over 3 years old. I still have my old computer, i think i'm going to have to try the one out of there, failing that i should be able to borrow one off a friend just to try. Other than that i'm not sure what it could be. Thank you very much.

Also in the meantime if anyone has any other suggestions while i try and get ahold of a psu to try, then please comment here.

I'll try and get a PSU sorted now and get back with the results. Thanks again.
 
One more thing, it might be completely unrelated, but i have a couple monitors up on screen now and the VCORE voltage changes a fair bit, while watching i can see it fluctuate between 1.400 > 2.400. While the minimum recorded is 0.672 and maximum reading is 2.560. Is this normal to fluctuate. Or could we be getting closer to the problem and the PSU causing this?
 
I haven't tried switching off and draining the residual power. I will give that a try shortly, (just about to have food).

I have just had a good look at the motherboard, and everything looks good, and very little dust inside.

It seems that i will have to try another PSU and see what happens, i dismissed it to begin with, because of it only being 3 years and a fairly decent brand. But i work in retail and i know even the best brands have 'bad days' in production. Thank you.
 
Hello again all, I haven't had much chance to get anything done yet, but i fired up Euro truck sim today, and instantly while on main menu or ingame my gpu was at 95-100% constantly, does this help to diagnose at all? I also fired up Counterstrike, the gpu started at 25% on main menu, and seemed to creep up very slowly, when it got to 45% load i turned the game off.
 
Hello Wookiee, ok so today after launching those 2 games, i did a gpu bench test, just to put a bit of pressure on it to see what happened, and was all good, no crashes. Then with RealBench did a cpu benchmark, and it crashed within a minute. While it was off i drained the residual power by removing the cord, and holding the power switch on for around 20 seconds. So now back on windows, did a cpu-z bench and that worked ok, i'm about to move onto RealBench or OCCTPT now and see if it crashes again. All voltages seemed within safe boundaries while doing cpu-z bench. Will be back shortly with results of what happened.
 
Ok first i went with OCCTPT, cpu test, it lasted 10 seconds before stopping with an error, and with a picture and graph, CPU went straight to 100% as soon as the test started. I have a folder with seperate graphs for the results, why it failed. I can't quite understand them myself, but can upload whichever ones if you need to see? Thanks
 
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