Psu?

[watcha]

I hope someone can help me.

I've just finished putting together my new system and now I am experiencing some difficulties.

Randomly, but mostly under high load, Windows Vista 64 will freeze on me. This does not blue screen, or reboot, instead it just freezes the screen to the current content, and remains like this for 2 minutes, at which point it unfreezes. Pressing control alt and delete simply turns the screen black, leaving just a mouse cursor (which I can now move). However I can't do anything else at this point. The clock also freezes at this time, so if the crash occurs at 11:13, when the PC unfreezes at 11:15 the time on the pc will still be 11:13.

Once the PC unfreezes, any keys I pressed will be registered and acted upon, and the system acts like nothing happened.

During the freeze, one of the fans (either my CPU fan or the nVidia fan next to one of the gfx cards) starts to make a louder noise, as if it is hitting something (which it isn't).

I carried out a mem test (using motherboard bios function and inbuilt Vista diagnostics) and it came back fine, however there was high pitched noise coming from my motherboard during these tests. I also carried out stability tests on my graphics cards, along with installing the latest drivers for Vista 64 from nVidia site, and no problems were found.

A seperate problem (which may be related) is that there is a crackling from one of the case fans (at the front) where it meets one of the Hard Disks. The fan is lit up in blue and I can see what looks like lit up dust particles flying down when there is crackling. This problem occurs randomly, but is not linked (apparently) to the freezing of the computer.

My first thoughts (and only ideas) are that this is a PSU problem, maybe it is overheating and cannot provide stable voltages under high load? The PSU fan IS blowing out warm air, but before I replace it I'd like to get a second opinion.

System is as follows:

1 x QX6800 @ 3.2GHz
2 x nVidia Geforce 8800 Ultra @ 1250 MHz
OCZ StealthXStream 600W PSU
2 x 1024GB PC2-10000 Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM Complete with 3 extra fans on Airflow unit (@ 1200Mhz)
2 x 10,000 150GB Western Digital Raptors Raid 0
2 x 320GB Hard Disks Raid 1
1 x Zalman Heatsink/Fan (CPU temp ranges from 40 to 55)
3 x 120mm case fans
1 x 250mm case fan
Dell 30" Monitor
Logitech G15 Keyboard
Microsoft Habu Mouse

Does this sound like a PSU problem?

Has anyone got any other suggestions?

Many thanks

 

[Nick]

are you overclocking? if so return the components to their factory speeds, run speed fan and core temp to see if your temps are too high, can you return the PSU as that is the most likely cause at this stage

 

[watcha]

Hey,

Thanks for your reply.

I was overclocking, but I'm not anymore.. I've reset all variables to standard and it's made no difference.

I have the temps on screen on vista, system is 32, CPU is 40-55 (low - high load), graphics cards are both 62 degrees before being used, and 65 under full load.

The CPU was getting to 75 when overclocked but I reinstalled the processor heat sink with a fresh layer of thermal paste and now it doesnt go over 55 (no overclocking either).

Thanks,

 

[Nick]

thats a nice system, your temps seem fine its gotta be the PSU, do you have one which you can try?

 

[watcha]

Thanks for your help.

I was paranoid about the PSU because I thought they'd sent me the 600W by accident but I had infact received the 1000W OCZ.

I have now fixed the problem.

It was a little metal screw that had become lodged inbetween the case fan and one of the 320gb Hard Drives, and was causing a short/spark and the other PSU problems. I've removed the screw and system has not crashed since.

Just tested on latest 3D Mark and scored just over 19,000!! So am very chuffed.

Now running at 3.4GHz Stable with room for more.

 

[Nick]

19k! well done, gald you solved it, so did you keep the 1000W PSU?