"Hard Hangs" possible PSU busted. Freezing and no apparent signs as to why.

So yesterday something happened that threw me into a fit. My PC's graphics card was replaced about 2 months ago due to some weird freezing problems. I am now fairly confident my PSU has gone bad. During game play I get a hard shut down, no BSOD, no restart. The system just turns off. When I looked up the code the the Event Log gave me I went onto Google and found this page http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028... The scenario 3 appears to match my situation best. I am not overclocking, I checked temps each time and they are not exceeding work load norms or even reaching them, I ran Prime 95 for a day and nothing seemed to go wrong. It happens with any game after just a bit, maybe 10 minutes. I recently formatted the unit just to clean it up, updated drivers etc. I also went and defragged my SSD and HDD I am considering going to best buy, picking up a PSU and testing it in my system tomorrow just to see what happens, they return policy is pretty lax and as long as I don't blow it up I think it will be fine. Thoughts?

heres the set up. le sigh.

-Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F120GBGT-BK 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive
-HIS H797F3G2M Radeon HD 7970 3GB
-Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB HDD
-CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB ram x2 (16 gig total)
-AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 3.1GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor
-COUGAR CMX 1000 COUGAR-1000CMX 1000W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire

Getting another psu is the easiest thing to do, for sure.

Couldn't hurt to run Furmark and see if the gpu temps are an issue along with seeing if loading the gpu causes the pc to shut down.

I had the same thing happen a few months back, it was the PSU. I don't recognize that brand, but check their warranty, you might still be covered. I know Corsair's was 3-5-7 years, somewhere in there.

He's got a 3 yr warranty.

I do, headin to best buy tomorrow, will def update on the status of it. Planning on getting a new one, RMA the other one, then might sell the replacement.

Sudden poweroffs like that are almost certain to be either an emergency temperature shutdown in the graphic card, or else a failing power supply. Overheat shutdowns on modern CPUs basically never happen anymore, unless you're running some kind of software temp utility that panics and powers off. But GPUs can still fail in that way, as far as I know. That said, one big way to make them overheat is to not provide enough power.

Like you, I suspect it's probably the supply. However, that's a beastly unit, with six 28A rails. If you somehow managed to get both your motherboard and video card on one rail, it could be overloading; the 7970 plus a 125 watt CPU is likely to exceed what one rail can supply. Or, you could have one bad rail in the supply. Switching the video card to a different connector might let you work around the problem, while you wait for a replacement, at least if they'll do an advance-shipment RMA for you. Could save you a trip to Best Buy.

I will try switching some rails around, the graphics card is on its own rail atm, but I'll move some things around and see what I get.

Dont wanna speak too soon, but after 30 minutes, I am still running crysis 2 multiplayer on extreme, no freezing. moved the rails of the non GPU items and all is well so far. Will update later.

So now I am running into a different issue it would appear. No freezing etc in Crysis, but now while playing Blacklight Retribution I get frozen, and have to do a hard reset. I also ran into a BSOD while just googling the problems I am having. The event viewer gave me error 7001, and 7023 before I froze in blacklight. Saw this person ended up having the same problem as I. link Ended up being his memory. I really hate to spend my break taking out RAM and testing it. Im gonnna run Prime 95 yet again and try to get some work done haha

thinkklinck wrote:

So now I am running into a different issue it would appear. No freezing etc in Crysis, but now while playing Blacklight Retribution I get frozen, and have to do a hard reset. I also ran into a BSOD while just googling the problems I am having. The event viewer gave me error 7001, and 7023 before I froze in blacklight. Saw this person ended up having the same problem as I. link Ended up being his memory. I really hate to spend my break taking out RAM and testing it. Im gonnna run Prime 95 yet again and try to get some work done haha

Don't discount old problems when new ones occur. Regarding the memory, it might be that it runs perfectly fine when in-spec, but when you've got dodgy power it starts showing problems. Watch out for disc errors too (channelling *Legion*, backup your stuff)

Power is really the foundation that every other component is built upon (as well as inter-dependence between components), and if that foundation isn't stable you'll see problems everywhere. I guess the key is to find a smoking gun at the lowest level possible before you try swapping out everything. Be methodical and try to be as certain as you can about proving what's good and bad.

Scratched wrote:
thinkklinck wrote:

So now I am running into a different issue it would appear. No freezing etc in Crysis, but now while playing Blacklight Retribution I get frozen, and have to do a hard reset. I also ran into a BSOD while just googling the problems I am having. The event viewer gave me error 7001, and 7023 before I froze in blacklight. Saw this person ended up having the same problem as I. link Ended up being his memory. I really hate to spend my break taking out RAM and testing it. Im gonnna run Prime 95 yet again and try to get some work done haha

Don't discount old problems when new ones occur. Regarding the memory, it might be that it runs perfectly fine when in-spec, but when you've got dodgy power it starts showing problems. Watch out for disc errors too (channelling *Legion*, backup your stuff)

Power is really the foundation that every other component is built upon (as well as inter-dependence between components), and if that foundation isn't stable you'll see problems everywhere. I guess the key is to find a smoking gun at the lowest level possible before you try swapping out everything. Be methodical and try to be as certain as you can about proving what's good and bad.

Gotya, gah, I guess I should still try and swap out the PSU. Thanks for the advice, I was just ready to be done with that problem but it would make sense if it is still giving me problems.

IMAGE(http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/23477363.jpg)

I just need my JUMP to conclusions mat!

GENTLEMAN, i speak to you while carefully hovering over my opened up rig. I believe The PSU was busted, due to the "hard hang" shut downs I was getting, but stopped after I moved the lines to other rails. So I replaced the PSU hoping it would also fix the weird freezing and restarts. It did not solve the problem, programs would still close abruptly and the system would freeze. My common sense said "okay, 32 bit game would always crash or freeze it, using up what I assume would be the first piece or RAM in the system" After removing this piece of memory, no more issues so far to speak of. Played blacklight for 30 minutes while multitasking without missing a beat, and no programs stopped running in the background of windows. I believe this fixing of 2 simultaneous hardware failures calls for a celebration! if something goes wrong then I will feel like an idiot, but right now I'm flying high.

Two problems at once is always super difficult to solve. Hopefully, you got it! *crossed fingers*

Hey guys, so the issues were as I thought, a corrupted piece of ram and bad psu. Running on a new psu right now and just 12 gig of memory. I noticed lately though that the machine is louder than before, I installed the psu facing the fan blowing in, after I had it facing out because I was unsure if the air would escape from the bottom. It would appear though that the graphics card is whats making a lot of noise once things get going, the fans just get loud. Do you think I shud turn the PSU back over so it blows the air out of the bottom vent? I faced it up this time because I thought maybe it had just been getting too hot the other way. Leme know whatya think.

Glad you solved the issues, the double problem really sucks.

I'm no expert, but blowing hot air from your psu into the case seems like a bad idea.

You want positive air pressure in your case to keep the dust out, but the air drawn into the case should all be cool air from the room and not heated by the PSU. Flip it around so it blows air out.

Gracias, I also discovered I may want a more powerful psu, my GPU can take 450 w on a full load, and the rest about 250, so a total of 700, the psu is good for 850 so for some games it just gets loud... I've started to look into more powerful options for a possible late christmas purchase.

Edit:doubledoublepost

Edit: double post