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Possible PSU giving out? Help appreciated.

post #1 of 26
7/6/12 at 11:31pm
Thread Starter 
I'm frustrated.

I am a web developer by profession and enjoy building computers. I am by no means an expert, and I am out of ideas.

MY computer started randomly restarting. I dual boot win7 and ubuntu 12.04. Both are x64. I noticed that I would wake up and the computer would be at the login screen. At first, I thought it was windows being dumb, but it does it in ubuntu as well. The computer will sometimes restart and as it is coming back up, it will restart again, and repeat until it just gives up and shuts off.

I began watching my CPU temps with coretemp and noticed they were strangely high, like 100C. I freaked out. I bought another heat sink and remounted the cpu with fresh artic silver.

The CPU temp reading were exactly the same. So I booted into my bios and the bios indicated the CPU cores were at 34C. I'm guessing coreTemp is wrong (and crossing my fingers that is the case).

I ran memtest, and had no errors. I had to run it 4 times because my computer would restart mid way through the test.

Here are my specs:
PSU: 650w BFG Tech
CPU: i5 2600k
MOBO: asus p8768-v lx
RAM: 2x4GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator
Video Card: BFG Tech GTS250 1GB

It's not overclocked. The PSU and GFX Card are pretty old.

I'd really appreciate any advice, I'm not sure what route to go next.
Edited by schmalaa - 7/7/12 at 12:37am
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post #2 of 26
7/6/12 at 11:38pm
Do you have a DMM to measure the voltages that reach motherboard?..
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post #3 of 26
7/6/12 at 11:41pm
Thread Starter 
I'm afraid not... I'll have to look into that. I've never used one or heard of one for that matter.
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post #4 of 26
7/6/12 at 11:46pm
A decent multimeter comes in handy to anyone who builds systems and fiddles with hardware and is rather cheap.

It might be the PSU(regulation issues most likely), it might be something else as well..... check all connectors, see if everything makes proper contact, also see if there's a short somewhere.

Disconnect all drives and try each one individually, see if you get the same results with all of them.
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post #5 of 26
7/6/12 at 11:50pm
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I think CoreTemp is lying to you. Temperatures in BIOS and at idle in Windows should not be so greatly varied. What version of CoreTemp are you using?

Why do you suspect the PSU? I don't see how it could be contributing to your CPU temperature problems, but if your system thinks that it's exceeding the thermal specifications for your CPU, then it could be triggering the restart. That's a hardware feature that is independent of your OS, so that it happens in both Windows and Ubuntu should be explained. How certain are you that the CPU cooler is installed properly?
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post #6 of 26
7/6/12 at 11:54pm
Thread Starter 
The PSU and the GFX card are the oldest parts of this build. I have also had issues with this PSU smelling slightly in the past. It's been quite awhile since it did that, however.

I was told to trust the BIOS before coretemp as they read directly from the sensor itself. I'm going to boot it back up into windows and see if I can't figure out what version it is running.
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post #7 of 26
7/7/12 at 12:02am
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That's not quite true. Both BIOS and any Windows program are reading the same sensor, but it's possible that the signal is being interpreted differently by each.

Your PSU smelling might have been an issue, but if it stopped and then worked well for a time, what leads you to believe that it's a problem now where it wasn't before? To be clear, how could your PSU lead your CPU to overheat? I'm not sure that it could. However, it could cause your reboot issue independent of the false readings from CoreTemp.

Can you link to the specific PSU that you have in your system? Would you kindly list each component in enough detail to identify it specifically? How long has your system been running without issue?
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post #8 of 26
7/7/12 at 12:09am
Thread Starter 
I don't think the CPU temps and PSU problems are related at all.

The PSU never stopped working after the "smelling" incident. It was that real sharp smell of resistors and what-not burning. But it was pretty mild. I have no real reason to believe that the issue is the PSU I guess. Just a best guess, I suppose.

The heat sink seems to be mounted pretty solidly. All of the pins seem to be lodged in well, and I was very careful in not overloading the paste and smoothly put it on with an old credit card.

Update

I was running an older version of CoreTemp...

At idle it sits at a solid 31C, under full load from a prime95 test it is sitting around 64-69C:

http://i.imgur.com/5QSK2.jpg
Edited by schmalaa - 7/7/12 at 12:22am
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post #9 of 26
7/7/12 at 12:21am
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In that case, I'm inclined to say that your CPU temps are software related. Download the next-to-newest version of CoreTemp and try it.. The newest version is known to be heavily bugged.

As for your PSU, it's normal for new electronic components to give off a bit of an odor when new. As long as it goes away and doesn't show any signs of degradation or destruction, there shouldn't be an issue.

Can you access your Windows Event Viewer files and tell us what caused the restarts? I'm not sure what the Linux equivalent is, I'm sorry to say.
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Windy
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CPUMotherboardGraphicsGraphics
i7 970 B1 @ 4.25GHz EVGA X58 Classified 3 (E770) EVGA GTX 580 EVGA GTS 450 
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LG DVD-RW Corsair H50 w/Scythe SFF21F Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04  
MonitorKeyboardPowerCase
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MouseMouse PadAudio
Logitech G500 Rocketfish Speed Creative Soundblaster XTreme Audio 
View all
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SU7300 Asus UL30Vt NVIDIA GT210m Intel GMA4500HD 
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View all
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WD Caviar Black 640GB | 1TB, 320GB, 120GB, 120GB Lite-On DVD-RW / LG Super-Multi DVD-RW Windows 7 Professional Samsung 2333SW + 2333HD 
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post #10 of 26
7/7/12 at 12:26am
Thread Starter 
I modified the above post with a screenie of the coretemp 1.0 RC3 in a prime95 test... it seems to be reading accurately. I have no reason to believe its not. The CPU fan is speeding up, as expected. Windows event viewer says nothing but "Unexpected Restart".

Also, when the PSU started "smelling" it was about a year old. It wasn't a "new" smell, it was like a sharp burning metal smell. But, it was pretty mild, I had to put my nose against the vent to really figure out what it was.

Here is my current PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817702018
Edited by schmalaa - 7/7/12 at 12:29am
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