Any PC Builders Out There?

Gonna reach out here to see if there's any thoughts from the peanut gallery...

Been having some hard restarts out of nowhere during gaming, tracked it down to my RAM being screwed. Bad enough to crash out Memtest86 with 200,000+ errors before I just held down the power button.

Sucks, but not the end of the world, I can order 16GB of ram tonight or tomorrow & I am back up and running soon. However, as I booted into BIOS once I noticed the voltage reading on my 12V rail was briefly red before stabilizing but it still looks really really low.

12V rail was reading between 10.987V to 11.248V

5V rail was 4.959 and 3.3V rail was 3.335

Is it possible my 12V rail is shitting the bed which led to the RAM getting fried, or is this just par for the course on a semi-"fanless" supply? PSU is a Corsair RM650x.

 

Erg meh gerd.

Seriously that’s terrible voltage. ATX standards allow for 5% variance. So anything below 11.4 volts is considered out of standard. Anything out of standard can lead to issues or, worse, damage.

Lower voltage is usually less damaging than overvolting, but that being said long term undercoating can lead to excessive amperage on the board and all sorts of issues. Hopefully it’s just the ram but I’d say either your MB and/or PSU is buggered as well.

How old is the PSU? Usually after 5 years it’s time to junk them and move on. Capacitors dry out and chokes wear, even PSUs designer for 10 years of operation tend to see high failure rates after year 7.

 

Disregard my last, I used a real deal multimeter and measured the 12V rail off one of the molex connectors... 12.14V. PSU is only about 6 months old at this point.

Boggles me that voltage detection on mobos can be so wacky, apparently this is a common occurrence but sure it was a pucker moment!

Of course this is my first semi-passive PSU so I was worried, but also wondering if that was some kinda tomfoolery they did to keep the wattage down when the fan was off and load was low.


And I took a 50/50 shot at which stick was bad and it looks like I am running OK with the remaining 8GB right now...

 

Yeah, usually it’s only one of the two sticks of anything. I’ve had that happen at least a half dozen times. As for the motherboard voltage sensors, you get what you pay for. I find the low to mid tier boards can be way off but usually the higher end stuff is pretty good.

 

This is an Asus ROG Strix board so it should be relatively good. And now I’m back to being stumped because I did some memory swapping to eliminate the motherboard as a factor, but now everything is passing memory tests, even the “bad” stick in any slot.

Go to BIOS and look at voltage, now the 12v rail is reading much higher... I have the multimeter plugged in to the molex right now and it’s reading 12.13 volts and BIOS says 11.968. Luckily the multimeter has a min hold function so I can hopefully keep an eye on the lowest it drops.

Frustrating when your symptoms are so random and are hard restarts with no BSOD or errors or anything...

 

Only my humble opinion but Asus has kind of gone to shit. I used to love their stuff but in the last couple of years I’ve had bad luck with them.

That being said I’m wondering if maybe you have a pin or solder problem on the ATX power? I’ve seen that once.

 

I tried the good old "percussive test" and gave the computer a nice solid whack or two and hearty shake while it was running to make sure I was not shorting a pin on the case or something along those lines. Connectors are all nice and solidly plugged in too. This whole odyssey started last weekend when I had some intermittent shutdowns and realized that a lot of my filters were choked with drywall dust. Reseated RAM, GPU, even took the CPU off and re-seated that with a fresh application of better thermal paste than the stock pre-applied glob that came on the cooler. Ran just peachy for 5 or 6 days then the problem cropped up again.

If my problem is power related I am going to start isolating the problem starting with what is coming from the wall. I live in Arizona, it's starting to get hot again, AC is kicking on and I guarantee the whole neighborhood has AC kicking on too.

So I just bought a line interactive UPS to replace my surge-only protector. It's unlikely, but not impossible, that the voltage drops are coming from the wall, not the PC.

 

Yeah good clean power is a good start.

 

It's seeming like it's either power related or the mobo has proverbially "consumed excrement" and one of the VRMs is selectively killing itself after running for a while. Had another bout of shutdowns after gaming with the multi-meter hooked up, 12V rail did not dip and all memory had tested good earlier in the day.

I currently have the PC running with a spare 550W supply (also Corsair) sitting on its side next to the case, we'll see if that sorts the issue.

 

If you're in the mid-tier GPU market right now prices are insane good. I picked up my brother an Gigabyte AMD 570, one of the nicer versions, for $120 CAD. That's about $90 USD. That card will handle almost anything for the next couple of years at 1080p, crazy how nVidia's pricing model has allowed AMD to pick up cheap business on the lower teirs with price drops on their older tech.

 

All done.

 

Nice. GTX 1080 FTW? Cant tell?

 

1070ti FTW2

 

New AMD CPUs look pretty good but GPU seems a little underwhelming. Also had a gift card so I picked up and installed a 1 TB M.2 Intel SSD just for games with long load times.

 

Speaking of giftcards.. I still have about $200 in MicroCenter giftcards. Hmmmm

 

I miss Fry's and MicroCenter. I have no gift cards. Still pondering what to do with the Ryzen 2400G. FML.

 

Looks like I finally found the limits of my I5-3470

 

Haha doing what though?

im still waiting for the I5-4960k and R9 390 to not play games at 1080p on high/ultra so i can justify an upgrade lol

 

Importing photos into Lightroom while fooling around in photoshop while having Edge playing YouTube in the background.

Before I spend any money upgrading chip, ram, or GPU though I absolutely have to get an SSD.

I’m not really a gamer (the most intensive game I think I have is GTA V, unless half life 2 is more intensive than GTA) so gaming never drives my upgrades, photo/video processing and rendering is what makes me want to upgrade.

 

Play a shooter once on a 2k 165hz display... then you’ll go right down that rabbit hole lol.

My old R9 390 is still partying on in my wife’s OW rig behind a Ryzen 1600.