PSU Blown?

SteWoo

SteWoo

SteWoo

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Joined
21 Nov 2011
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73
Location
Liverpool
I was having a few system freeze ups recently, mainly when playing games or watching videos. After a few hours or so my screen would just freeze, PC was still on along with all my peripherals but no key combinations would get me out of the frozen screen meaning I had to hold down the power button to turn the system off and restart it.

I went through a lot of steps trying to diagnose what was causing the freeze. I've ran MemTest86, Prime95 with RAM settings turned up for 24hours, and monitored temps whilst the system was under load. I ran all these first because I was sure there was nothing wrong with my GPU as it's only 2 or 3 months old. However I ran Furmark to cover all bases; I left it running for 10 minutes and when I came back to my PC everything was off, opening up the case it felt pretty warm inside and it smelt like when a fuse has blown in a plug socket (I think the smell was coming from the PSU). After touching a few of the components the GPU was warm (it was holding at 70C before I left it) but the PSU was really hot too.

I'm obviously thinking my PSU has blown, but am wondering if it may be something to do with my MOBO as when the AC is plugged into the PSU my mouse lights come on and pressing the power button shows the red power light on the case blink on then off.

System Specs:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (OC to 3.45GHz)
GPU: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X OC 4096MB
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H AMD 890GX
RAM: Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
PSU: CIT Dual Rail 750W
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA 6Gb/s
SSD: Can't remember exact SSD as I'm at work but I think it's OCZ Vector 150 120GB
Disk Drive: Samsung SH-118BB/BEBE SATA 18x DVD-ROM
Fans: 7 case fans

If it is the PSU I'll have to invest in a new (and a higher wattage?) PSU. Is there anything I should watch out for that may have also been affected by the PSU burning out? Such as MOBO damage etc?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers.
 
Looking back at the PSU now I realise how cheap and nasty it is, I was trying to build my rig 4.5+years ago in Uni on a budget! Will another 750W be sufficient or should I go up to 850W?

Do you think the PSU could have been the culprit of the intermittent freezes before I blew it up? Maybe it was struggling to provide sufficient power to other components after a prolonged period of GPU usage??
 
CiT PSU's are absolute junk. Get yourself a SuperFlower HX750 on offer this week. It provides a reliable 750W of 80+ Gold Certified power and will be more than enough for your rig.
 
Cheers guys, I'll sort myself out with a SuperFlower. Do you think there would be any adverse side effects from the PSU dying on other components? Wondering whether I need to be careful when starting everything back up?

Also, do you think the PSU could have been to culprit of the random freezes I explained in my original post?
 
I'd stop using it straight way TBO if your getting instability and your sure it's not down to anything else. Once had a chepo PSU back when I knew nothing and it killed a motherboard after being unstable for a while. The voltage got lower and lower and it went out of spec. They tend to get more and more unstable untill they go bang or stop working, the protection isn't usually up to standard either so if they don't kill anything while going through a slow death they can when the do eventually go pop.
 
SteWoo said:
Cheers guys, I'll sort myself out with a SuperFlower. Do you think there would be any adverse side effects from the PSU dying on other components? Wondering whether I need to be careful when starting everything back up?

Also, do you think the PSU could have been to culprit of the random freezes I explained in my original post?
Click to expand...

Could have been, a bad PSU can cause instability. It may have damaged other components, hopefully it died peacefully. :D
 
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