Power Supply may be going, not sure.

[Djriff]

As the title says I have a suspicious my power supply may be going.

I have an ATX gold rated 1200w PSU atm. It's way overkill for my system but Fry's happened to have a great deal on it so I picked it up for $80. Recently I've been having some issues with my Nvidia 970 GTX actually working. At first I thought it might have become unseated from the PCI-E slot as I had moved my desktop recently, however reseating it didn't fix the problem. What I discovered last night when I restarted my system and ran into the same problem I noticed that while I had lights on my 970, it wasn't actually turning on (no fan). I found this really weird so I unplugged and replugged the power back into it and it turned on and ran just fine. However my PC decided to randomly restart itself about 15m later (no idea why, event logs said nothing), only to run into the same problem. Unplugging and replugging the power cable fixed it again. I know it's not the video card as I still have my old 770 laying around and I tested that to make sure and ran into the same issue. I thought it might be the PCI-E slot going bad so I swapped to my other one and ran into the same issue. What do you guys think my issue might be?

PC Specs:
MSI Z87 Mobo
i7 4770k OC'd to 4.25Ghz
ASUS Nvidia GTX 970
16gb Corsair DDR3 3333 RAM
ATX 1200w Gold Rated PSU
1 250GB Samsung SSD
1 2TB Hitachi HD

Typically I run a 3 monitor mount setup with no problems at all. When this issue occurs I get nothing on my screens. Plugging my monitor into the mobo directly makes it work, but that's not something I want to game off of.

[Denpepe]

What brand is the power supply? Try to use different cables going to your graphics card, might just be a defective cable or the connector.

[Djriff]

What brand is the power supply? Try to use different cables going to your graphics card, might just be a defective cable or the connector.

ATX and I did swap it out, even tried a different spot on the PSU, same thing.

[Denpepe]

ATX is the specification, not the brand. Should be something like corsair, seasonic, XFX etc..

[Djriff]

Oh sorry, it's Corsair.

[Mythbredor]

EDIT - Seems you already tried plugging directly into your onboard graphics.

If you want to know for sure what's going on you could purchase a Power Supply Tester off amazon or your favorite tech store and test all your cables.

When you plugged into your onboard graphics did you have the same crashing issue?

I would drop your overclock - or even better reset your bios completely.

Are you overclocking your Video Card at all?

These aren't in order whatsoever by the by. But I don't think at first glance that it's your power supply.

Your GPU powering on but not spinning up the fans seems like a mobo error.

[Djriff]

No crashing issue, booted into windows just fine.

I tried that, had the same issues after i dropped the OC so i put it back.

Video Card isn't being OC'd at all.

I'll look into that tester though. Like right now it's fine.

[Mythbredor]

No crashing issue, booted into windows just fine.

I tried that, had the same issues after i dropped the OC so i put it back.

Video Card isn't being OC'd at all.

I'll look into that tester though. Like right now it's fine.

Bad video card or bad PCI-e lane. Power supply failures are strange so I can't really say for sure if it's that or not. Coulllddd be a ram error. If you want you can download "memtest86" I believe that's the correct name and run it. I'll do some more thinking and get back to you.

[Djriff]

I'll do that after work today and post the results.

Something weird that's been happening is sometimes the system will just freeze randomly. It doesn't happen too often though.

[Mythbredor]

I'll do that after work today and post the results.

Something weird that's been happening is sometimes the system will just freeze randomly. It doesn't happen too often though.

I may have forgotten a fairly important thing I've come to my senses tho. Update ALL of your drivers. Most important graphics drivers. Then get back to me on the results of the memtest and if the driver updates helped.

[Djriff]

Drivers are up to date, make sure of that weekly actually.

[Flatspriest]

This sounds more like a mobo issue than a PSU issue. Could be caused from overheating if you don't have enough cooling in the case.

[Djriff]

The mobo itself overheating? I have this case. It has a ton of fans and I do a weekly cleaning of it to make sure it doesn't get too dusty.

[Mythbredor]

This sounds more like a mobo issue than a PSU issue. Could be caused from overheating if you don't have enough cooling in the case.

Yeah I'm doubting it's a overheating issue. BUUUT. Misure OP. Are you gaming during the crash or does it happen randomly while browsing the web etc etc.

[Djriff]

Both. Like last night it froze up as I was walking up to the HFC instance. Today at lunch it froze as I was just sitting in my garrison in wow. Wow definitely isn't causing anything to overheat though.

[Mythbredor]

Both. Like last night it froze up as I was walking up to the HFC instance. Today at lunch it froze as I was just sitting in my garrison in wow. Wow definitely isn't causing anything to overheat though.

Wow can run your CPU through its paces. Monitor your cpu temps next time you get the chance if your heatsink/thermal paste has failed in some way it could cause it to overheat even in lightest uses.

[Djriff]

I have done that, even stress testing it and it didn't go out of norms. On a side note how often should I reapply that stuff?

[Mythbredor]

I have done that, even stress testing it and it didn't go out of norms. On a side note how often should I reapply that stuff?

I haven't after 6 months still completely fine. So you shouldn't really worry about it unless you notice your temps are getting oddly high.

[Djriff]

Ah ok. It's been about 2 years now, so maybe it's time?

[Mythbredor]

Ah ok. It's been about 2 years now, so maybe it's time?

Maybe if you're overheating it's probably good to do but not something you need to do RIGHT NOW. unless you're infact overheating