Is my PSU faulty?

[Giantwasp]

I have a fairly serious problem with my system, which I am almost certain is hardware related, but I haven't established which piece of hardware it is. The current contender is the PSU.

The problem is that the PC hard freezes at random times. ie. The screen becomes still, clock stops and it does not respond to the mouse or keyboard. The only way to recover is to cut the power. This seems to happen at anytime from seconds after power on upto about 3days

PSUs are something I know basically nothing about.
lm_sensors (this is a linux prog, but I think the readings should be similar to a windows one) gives the following:

VCore: +1.15 V
+12V: +11.92 V
+3.3V: +3.39 V
+5V: +5.20 V
-12V: -14.91 V
V5SB: +5.13 V
VBat: +0.13 V

and the BIOS says:

VCORE 1.568V
3.3V 3.376V
5V 5.268V
12V 12.416V

do these values ring any alarms or are they normal?

I am not certain it is the PSU so if reckon it is will be something else. I can and will give more info but I don't want to write a massive post that noone reads.
You can see the components in my rig from the link below.

 

[fstime]

They seem fine to me, anything above 11.89 is fine in my opinion, your bios readings do seem a bit high though.

By the way, what kind of CPu do you have. my A64 needs 1.5V. and I think the Winchester is a little less.

 

[gamerj]

I doubt that the PS is to blame...usually you will get reboots instead of freezing ... But : during gaming, does the PS get really hot?

Its probably not a cpu overheating issue, since the freeze ups are so random...

I would try the obvious first :

Update the drivers of your motherboard and your graphic adapter.
Run a thourough virus/spy-scan

leaving your pc on for days at a time is a bad idea in my opinion anyways...i dont see the point of it, but maybe you have a memory leak or something?

 

[Giantwasp]

I have a AMD 64 3500+ w/ 640KB cache I don't know what codename that is.

Your post may have solved my problem though! Noticing that my VCORE was significantly below 1.5V, I thought what would affect my VCORE and remembered that I enabled Cool 'n Quiet in my BIOS not that long ago. I have just disabled it again and lm_sensors now reports:
VCore: +1.58 V
+12V: +11.80 V
+3.3V: +3.39 V
+5V: +5.23 V
-12V: -14.91 V
V5SB: +5.13 V
VBat: +0.19 V

2.58V seems much nicer!

Due to the nature of the problem I won't know whether it has worked until the PC has been running for a few days, but I am feeeling hopefull.

Another question might be why is cool 'n quiet causing this, could it be I am not using Stock HSF, Zalman CNPS7000B-Alcu Cooler instead?

Also since this is not definately the solution any other suggestions are welcome.

 

[gamerj]

lol...omg cool n' quiet, dumbest feature ever...

Just turn of the poor computer when u are done with it lol

 

[Giantwasp]

Originally posted by: gamerj
I doubt that the PS is to blame...usually you will get reboots instead of freezing ... But : during gaming, does the PS get really hot?

Its probably not a cpu overheating issue, since the freeze ups are so random...

I would try the obvious first :

update the drivers of your motherboard and your graphic adapter...

Fairly certain it is not the GPU as I tried an old Graphics card in there and it still crashed

When Cool n' Quiet was on I got temps of 30C to 62C under load
With it off I get temps from 50C to 62C

 

[Giantwasp]

Even more certain it is cool 'n quiet now because another strange behaviour I noticed is that a couple of games were running too fast , ut2004 and Hitman Contracts. I know it seems strange to say a game is too fast but it was like I had a double doom stlye berserker power up all the time. They now run normal speed