TL;DR at bottom
So playing a round of BF4 Tuesday night when suddenly my whole system powers down. Desk lamp still on so not a power cut, I blinked at the same as the power down so not 100% sure if there was a brown out. Anyway I turn to my left to see if there's smoke and I catch a glimpse of an ember floating down from around the PSU. (EDIT:I suppose it as like a welding spark. Yellow hot but slowly floating down)
I let it get to windows logging in/loading the desktop partly through disbelief and not wanting to corrupt OS (5 secs anyway, SSD FTW). Yanked the plug and started sniffing around. Smelt like it was coming from the PSU. It was 1:30AM so I figured it was bedtime.
In the morning there was no smell. Unscrewed PSU. Gave it a good sniff, asked my folks to sniff it in case I was nose dead and they couldn't smell it either. Stuck my head as deep as I could into the case and couldn't smell anything.
I reckon it was the PSU since it was starting to whine for a long time. I don't want to pull the board out to shove my nose in it properly. The only things I see that could go wrong with the mobo in that region are the caps or MOSFETS. Can solid caps blow? Now this is stabbing in the dark but the potentiometers to regulate the CPU fans dangle in that area too. But I shoved them up my nose this morning and no smell.
What do you guys reckon?
TL;DR
Update:
So an update on this story.
I tested my Silverstone PSU with two IDE HDD's plugged into it and all the voltages were still well within tolerance. I lost the sheet I wrote them on but they were 0.1~0.2% within tolerance worst might have been 2%. Left it running for 2hrs occasionally checking the voltages and they were still fine. I got a Thermaltake Dr.Power II PSU tester on Tuesday and tested with that also. Passed all tests including the 'Power Good'.
This was late and I was doing it not too long before going to bed. Just before I left I figured I may as well test the Hiper PSU that I nicked out of the living room PC and was currently powering my PC. By the way my components seem ok. Getting back on track the Hiper PSU failed on 5V. The tester just beeps a red F at me so I went and stuck my multi-meter into a connector and lo and behold it was 4.3V (below the ~4.75 minimum). I thought to myself that maybe the tester isn't giving the PSU enough load (it should do, it's a damn PSU tester) so I plugged in two HDD's to the PSU along side the tester and still it failed. But plug the PSU into a full system and measure 5V anywhere you like and it's within spec (5.1v).
I figured "OK, my PSU is fine. Plug it back in and worry about the Hiper later" so I did. Used the desktop, watched vids, played Civ5, no problem. 3 days later I launch BF3. The instant the 3D map loaded the power dropped. Re-launched it to confirm and it happened again. Launched PLA Benchmark and it happened again.
I swapped out the Silverstone for the Hiper again. BF3 and the benchmark worked fine. Which means the Silverstone PSU is not OK despite what the tests said (can't handle the current draw?) and the Hiper is potentially borked too.
Any advice?
So playing a round of BF4 Tuesday night when suddenly my whole system powers down. Desk lamp still on so not a power cut, I blinked at the same as the power down so not 100% sure if there was a brown out. Anyway I turn to my left to see if there's smoke and I catch a glimpse of an ember floating down from around the PSU. (EDIT:I suppose it as like a welding spark. Yellow hot but slowly floating down)
I let it get to windows logging in/loading the desktop partly through disbelief and not wanting to corrupt OS (5 secs anyway, SSD FTW). Yanked the plug and started sniffing around. Smelt like it was coming from the PSU. It was 1:30AM so I figured it was bedtime.
In the morning there was no smell. Unscrewed PSU. Gave it a good sniff, asked my folks to sniff it in case I was nose dead and they couldn't smell it either. Stuck my head as deep as I could into the case and couldn't smell anything.
I reckon it was the PSU since it was starting to whine for a long time. I don't want to pull the board out to shove my nose in it properly. The only things I see that could go wrong with the mobo in that region are the caps or MOSFETS. Can solid caps blow? Now this is stabbing in the dark but the potentiometers to regulate the CPU fans dangle in that area too. But I shoved them up my nose this morning and no smell.
What do you guys reckon?
TL;DR
- Play BF4
- PC go night-night
- I go 'eh?'
- PC go Elloooo
- Me looky at PC
- See pretty light float down
- Me go 'uh-oh'
- Me pull plug
- Me smell PC
- PC bum bum no smell good
- Me go night night
- Light light
- Open PC
- Take out Big Black........BOX
- Smell Big Black ... Box
- No smell?
- Smell inside case
- No smell
- Smell CPU giblets
- No smell
- .
- Helpy?
Update:
So an update on this story.
I tested my Silverstone PSU with two IDE HDD's plugged into it and all the voltages were still well within tolerance. I lost the sheet I wrote them on but they were 0.1~0.2% within tolerance worst might have been 2%. Left it running for 2hrs occasionally checking the voltages and they were still fine. I got a Thermaltake Dr.Power II PSU tester on Tuesday and tested with that also. Passed all tests including the 'Power Good'.
This was late and I was doing it not too long before going to bed. Just before I left I figured I may as well test the Hiper PSU that I nicked out of the living room PC and was currently powering my PC. By the way my components seem ok. Getting back on track the Hiper PSU failed on 5V. The tester just beeps a red F at me so I went and stuck my multi-meter into a connector and lo and behold it was 4.3V (below the ~4.75 minimum). I thought to myself that maybe the tester isn't giving the PSU enough load (it should do, it's a damn PSU tester) so I plugged in two HDD's to the PSU along side the tester and still it failed. But plug the PSU into a full system and measure 5V anywhere you like and it's within spec (5.1v).
I figured "OK, my PSU is fine. Plug it back in and worry about the Hiper later" so I did. Used the desktop, watched vids, played Civ5, no problem. 3 days later I launch BF3. The instant the 3D map loaded the power dropped. Re-launched it to confirm and it happened again. Launched PLA Benchmark and it happened again.
I swapped out the Silverstone for the Hiper again. BF3 and the benchmark worked fine. Which means the Silverstone PSU is not OK despite what the tests said (can't handle the current draw?) and the Hiper is potentially borked too.
Any advice?
