Could this be due to a bad motherboard?

[Doggiedog]

I figured I would ask in a new thread.

My new rig (Asus P8P67 Deluxe) continues to have problems. Last night, it shut down again. The problem I had was my HDDs shutting down and my system crashing. I thought it was caused by upgrading to the latest P8P67 bios 1253. But even using 1053, it still crashed. This time it didn't recover.

When I tried to reboot, it would reboot several times. When it finally did post, my HDDs were missing and my RAID setup was gone. After getting into the bios, there was a message saying that a power surge caused my system to reboot. This happens every time I reboot. Inside the bios, I can see that my 5V rail voltage is fluctuating pretty badly. It jumps from 4.1V-4.7V and is listed as red most of the time. Before I go out and get a new PSU, does this sound like a MB problem or more of a PSU problem? My Corsair HX520 is 3-4 years old. I've got 5 HDDs, 1 SSD, Radeon HD 5870, DVD-R, 6 120mm fans, 1 140mm fan, and USB speakers.

Thanks.

 

[airdata]

I'm not really an expert on power allocation, but it sounds like you're pretty loaded there on a 520w psu.


http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/storage/hddpower.html

for example, the plain Barracuda 7200.8 may draw up to 2.5A from the +12 V line at start-up. Add 3 W drawn from +5 V to get the peak start-up power consumption of 33 W! What if there are two or three such drives in a system? In this case you should play safe and take a PSU at least by 100-150 W more powerful than processor+video+motherboard require. Food for thought.

I'm also seeing that the 5870 could be drawing around 140w idle and around 250w under load.

 

[Doggiedog]

I'm not really an expert on power allocation, but it sounds like you're pretty loaded there on a 520w psu.


http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/storage/hddpower.html


I'm also seeing that the 5870 could be drawing around 140w idle and around 250 under load.

Thanks. Seems to make sense. Don't PSUs lose like 5-10% efficiency each year or something like that too? I guess I'll try going the new PSU route. I'm due and it's probably a better solution than having to RMA an MB.

 

[airdata]

I'm not positive about that, just floating the idea out there.

You may look at your different parts and just see what all of their power needs are.

 

[Haunty]

I'd reset bios to default/turn the overclocking off, remove all HDDs except your boot drive. See if it is stable then.

 

[Doggiedog]

It was the PSU. I put in a new one (Seasonic X-660) and everything works fine now.