Question "Showroom build" gone bad? (HP ProDesk 400 G3 total conversion) boot loops? SOLVED.

VirtualLarry

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So I transplanted an HP ProDesk 400 G3 mini-Tower with a Skylake i5-6500 into a nice case with tempered glass and RGB / rainbow fans. Gave it to my buddy, as a sort-of "showroom piece" for him to show other potential customers and refer them to me. (Edit: IN the past, a few years back.)

He gave the PC to one of his offspring, to use to play RoBlox, FortNite, etc.

I believe that currently, it has a Rosewill PSU that I only just replaced 3-4 month ago, and a GTX 1650 GPU.

It's a moderately-decent gaming rig for e-sports-ish gaming.

My Buddy says that it was boot-looping, and wasn't booting over at his place. When his offspring touched it. it would power-off.

Hr brought it to me, and of course, it fired up no problem, couldn't get it to crash in 30 minutes of running.

I suggested that the power cord might be old and failing, and sent him back with a new one.

That apparently did NOT fix the issue. I suggested that he might have an outlet issue, given other electrical-related failures in both his room and the offspring's.

He swears up and down that he doesn't have outlet issues.

He says that the problem rears itself after 2-3 days of running. Computer freezes, attempts to force power-off and reboot, result in boot-looping. (*)

Which makes me think temps, he thinks PSU (again). I told him that I would replace the PSU under warranty, but that might not actually be the problem.

Thing is, I have a hard time believing it's a temperature problem, unless the cooler is dislodged, but the OEM cooler for these HP mobos is screwed down in four corners. The case has a mesh front and THREE intake fans. And they only have a GTX 1650.

I gave my buddy a 3200G desktop as a backup PC, might ask him to deploy that in the offspring's room, using the same power cord, surge, and outlet, and see if it has the same issues.

(*) I wonder how much of the boot-looping, is the activation of Windows Automatic Recovery? (I know that it reboots several times in the process.) And thus the boot-looping might be a red herring, and instead, system freezing after three days of power-on might be the real problem.
 
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DAPUNISHER

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I'd plug it into a surge strip at minimum, given the janky electrical at their place. Replacing the PSU is always a good idea. If it keeps boot looping maybe try re-flashing the bios even if it has the latest.

I would have run Malwarebytes on it as soon as I started troubleshooting. Normies cannot be trusted. :p Another SOP is checking the event logs or installing who crashed.

But if the board is flaky I would not be surprised. It might not be dealing with the 1650's power draw properly either. Even with the 6 pin you can see some odd behavior if the PCIE slot only provides 35W or something.
 

VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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But if the board is flaky I would not be surprised. It might not be dealing with the 1650's power draw properly either. Even with the 6 pin you can see some odd behavior if the PCIE slot only provides 35W or something.
That's an interesting point that I hadn't fully considered. (But aren't x16 slots supposed to support 75W of power, per spec? Everything else is more-or-less standard micro-ATX spec, PSU and mobo aren't totally proprietary.)
 

DAPUNISHER

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You would think that 75W should be standard, but it never was. I have run across OEMs that supply half that from the PCIE slot. You should see if you can find the specs for that board at HP. I would not be surprised if the slot power is rated at 35W.
 

DAPUNISHER

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It booted right up at my place while my buddy was there. I did not stress-test the GPU then.
The fact it takes a couple of days to flake out, makes it a tough one. The boot looping points to the board or storage mostly, if the PSU is good.
 

VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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You would think that 75W should be standard, but it never was. I have run across OEMs that supply half that from the PCIE slot. You should see if you can find the specs for that board at HP. I would not be surprised if the slot power is rated at 35W.

PCI express x16 (v 3.0)​
1 - 4.2 in full height, 6.6 in length 75W max. power​
 

VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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The fact it takes a couple of days to flake out, makes it a tough one. The boot looping points to the board or storage mostly, if the PSU is good.
Memory leak from leaving MMO running for three days straight, didn't check how much of the primary SSD is free, but it's probably a 256GB SATA. Causing Windows to run out of VM, and lock up? (*)

Alterntively, the 3.5" SATA HDD is dying, and causing SATA port / system freezes.

(*) Would this show in Event log as "disk space low" on the OS drive? Before a crash, I mean.
 
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VirtualLarry

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Swapped PSU, had a spare identical Rosewill 'Lepton' modular PSU. Worked.

Found out that buddy had the PC on (presumably shaggy) carpet. Doh! Intake for PSU is on bottom. PSU died / went wonky, due to being "suffocated", most likely. Had a mm of dust on everything too. Gave buddy a can-o-air, told him to take it outside and blow the dust off, so he did.

Told him to put the PC on a board, or something.