Systematic PC instability - towards first minutes of booting - turns out it's bad PSU

Ionizer86

Diamond Member
Jun 20, 2001
5,292
0
76
Hi all,

I'm posting this thread to provide some good anecdotal information. I've had some PC instability for quite a few weeks that ultimately turned out to be the PSU, even though I was hunching that the motherboard was at fault for a long time.

Cliff's: if your PC instability tends to be right after a boot, but once you "catch a stable boot", your system is stable for hours, this is most likely the PSU's fault.

Specs:
eVGA nForce 610i / GeForce 7050 motherboard
2x 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2
Core 2 Duo e7200 2.53GHz (no overclock)
eVGA nVidia GeForce 9600GT SSC (super super clocked)
OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD
WD 6400AAKS (7200RPM 640GB)
Integrated Realtek ALC880 (?) audio
Thermaltake Purepower 500w PSU

Symptoms: PC tends to crash and blue screen, with a new driver at fault each time. I'd look up the codes, and each time, it'd be related to something different: nv4 (nvidia), Direct X, some hex codes that couldn't directly be attributed to any hardware, etc.

Upon rebooting, It'd often crash or freeze again while loading windows, regardless of if it was safe mode or a normal boot. A few times, it froze while I was tinkering with the bios settings, leading me to believe that this was not related to any driver issue. Sometimes, during post, the splash screen eVGA logo looked splotchy, leading me to believe that my video card could have been bad.

The weirdest thing about the instability? It was concentrated towards the first few minutes of boot - it wasn't random per se. Say I could boot up, get into Windows, and be stable for 15 minutes. My pc would then be stable all evening.

I eliminated the video card as my problem by pulling my 9600GT, using my integrated GeForce 7050 for a few days, and still encountering the same issues.

I eliminated the ram as the culprit by passing many cycles of Memtest.

I eliminated the hard drive as the culprit by booting off of both the SSD and the mechanical HDD and encountering the same issues.

I updated all drivers: network card, sound, video.

I was guessing that this was not a CPU issue - I underclocked from stock speeds and still had the same instability issues.

I was fairly convinced that my motherboard was the culprit, but I couldn't be sure (nobody to swap PSU and socket 775 boards with). Finally my friend stepped in and said, my symptoms of instability right after a boot, followed by a "stable boot" that would last for hours is most likely because of the PSU.

With that said, I bought the next hot deal PSU that was also a quality unit. I replaced my Thermaltake Purepower 500w PSU with an Antec Neo Eco 520c unit, and all my problems have been fixed!
 

Ionizer86

Diamond Member
Jun 20, 2001
5,292
0
76
or an ECS motherboard ;) no seriously. ecs = teh sux
Well, my board is a cheapo eVGA (it was $30 after rebate or so). I suspected it was the culprit until my friend suggested the PSU. Thankfully my board is working great. It lacks some features, such as dual channel DDR, but it works fine as far as running DDR2-800 despite not officially supporting the spec, allowing for voltage adjustments and mild overclocking, and even having digital Toslink sound output :)

No... The Antec Neo IS a quality unit. The Purepower was NOT.
Agreed, the Thermaltake isn't terrific. It's only rated for 70%+ efficiency. This might be scandalous to post in the PSU forum, but as long as it was reliably and not putting out crazy heat or anything, I wasn't going to object to my $12 after Bing/rebate purchase from summer 2008.

Now, I'm probably way undertaxing my 520W Antec with my Core 2 e7200 and 9600GT, but reviews suggest it is 80%+ efficient, even at low ~100w to 200w outputs :)