PC restarting problem

Ferax

Ferax

Ferax

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Joined
25 Jun 2008
Posts
219
Hi all,

Having some problems with my PC ([email protected], 6950, MSI P67A, Corsair 650W PSU, 4GB XMS3) at the moment, it is restarting itself without any warning. Started Friday night, so Saturday had a good clean out, dropped the OC and checked temps for a couple of hours under load - all seemed fine, cpu temps never got above 42, and gpu was running fine too. However, yesterday it started again, ran fine for 30 mins or so, then retstarted, but now when restarting it it only runs for a minute or 2 before restarting again. Left it for a couple fo hours and it booted properly again, ran for 20 mins, then restarted, lasted about 5 secs then restarted again. Now it won't come on at all, if it does, the fans come up for about 2 secs before it dies.

Doesn't seem to be temp related as far as I can tell. Could it be the PSU? Fan is working in it, but there is very little airflow coming out of the back of the PSU, though tbh, I'm not quite sure how much it should be pushing... I don't have a spare one, so reluctant to buy a new one just to troubleshoot!

Any ideas would be gratefully received :)
 
have you got a spare lower power requirement gfx card you can use ?

all the power cables secure to mobo and graphics card ?

try unplugging any power conectors not needed, spare hard drive, dvd drive etc.
 
No spare graphics card unfortunately as I had to sell the last one to help pay for the upgrade. All cables are secure, I tried unplugging the DVD drive and the media HDD when I gave the system a good clean. I don't know if this contributed to the fact that it then seemed to work ok for 24 hours or not, unfortunately I didn't do it very scientifically...

I do have an old PSU, but it's just a 400W one, so not sure if it would have the juice to boot the system. Do you think that could be worth a try or would it be futile?
 
Check your PSU is clean!
Maybe your PSU is overheating if there's no airflow? Try and blow some air into it (just from your mouth, from the inside to the outside, so your case isn't filled with dust!), and if dust comes jetting out then I'd recommend upgrading your lungs & blowing through a straw. Or even using some compressed air and really cleaning out the dust.

My Corsair 750W spews out air! Especially when it's under load, it churns out some crazy heat and air!

If your PSU is clean or it still restarts after you've cleaned it
Try the 400W PSU, and unplug your graphics card - Aslong as you have onboard VGA of course.

If it works, then your PSU or graphics card are having problems.

Oh Noes! It's Still Restarting With Onboard VGA!
Try removing all but 1 stick of RAM and any extra peripherals (soundcard, CD-Rom. All PCI(E) cards!). Pretty much everything that doesn't host your OS(s).

You want to load it on barebones.

Try it again.

Conclusion and Jerry's Final Thoughts
Just keep narrowing it down; using different combinations of hardware until you find the culprit! The process of elimination is the simplest and easiest way.

The quickest way would be if you had spare parts, and you could swap them in gradually to find the culprit without having to rebuild your entire PC.

I remember an old Creative sound card was restarting and screwing up my PC once. I went to barebones, and as soon as I plugged it in, my computer went haywire!
 
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mp, gave it a good clean out with a can of air - 2/3rds of my intake fans have dust filters so it wasn't too bad, but there was still some dust on there. Should note that temps were fine before cleaning, but it's good to do a bit of housekeeping anyway!

Did get some dust out of the PSU as well Jambo, but there may still be some leftover. Its about 3 1/2 years old - was hoping that a Corsair might have a bit more life left in it. From the sound of your Corsair, I would guess the PSU is the prime culprit, it just a very gentle airflow and not much noise. Would also make sense that it will boot up again if left for a few hours as it would have time to cool down again. Thanks for the advice though, sounds like a good course of action. Had forgotten about the onboard VGA (i5 cpu), so trying with the old psu is a good course of action. I put a wireless network card ina month ago - didn't notice any problems at the time, but might be worth yoinking that out especially.

Can you change the fan in a psu if it is the psu cooling that's failing?

Edit: should mention that the fan is still spinning in the psu, but doesn't appear to be shifting much air
 
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Ferax said:
Had forgotten about the onboard VGA (i5 cpu)

Can you change the fan in a psu if it is the psu cooling that's failing?

Edit: should mention that the fan is still spinning in the psu, but doesn't appear to be shifting much air
Click to expand...

not sure you can use the onboard vga of the processor with the p67 mobos thats h61/h67/z68 i think.

you can, just be careful, you'll need to discharge the capacitors before you touch anything.

if it's out of warrenty it might be worth just opening up the psu and check the state of the psu's interior.

don't suppose you have a desktop fan you could point at the bottom fan of the psu to see if that helps cool it ?

have you tried running with the side of the case off, should help get rid of the warm case air and not push the fan of the psu to much.
 
Thanks for all the help guys. You're quite right mp, there's no video out on the P67 mobos so that didn't work. After testing with an old psu though, the system did power up, so the power supply seemed confirmed as the culprit.

Ordered a new one and problem solved! Working like a dream again now. Went for the Lepa 750W modular one, so now have a neater case as well!

Thanks again for all the help.
 
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