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My PC keeps turning on and off every 3 seconds. Is my motherboard faulty?

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Unfortunately I am kind of tight on money since I also bought a new GPU so I went with a CX again. It lasted me 3 years so I'm not complaining.
 
Man... why the same?
3 years is very short period for a PSU. And a proper PSU, when it dies, must not take with it other components. This is unacceptable to me.
Though its not sure if the PSU fried the VGA or the other way around... Could be the other way. Still it shouldn't happen...

CX line from Corsair is the lowest quality from newer tech and CXM and VS lines is old tech.
You could at least go with RM/RMi/RMx. Or even a different brand like EVGA or Seasonic.
HX/HXi and AX/AXi are very nice but way more expensive.
Dont know anything about TX, CSM...

How much did you pay it may I ask? ...and where is your local market?
 
Unfortunately I am kind of tight on money since I also bought a new GPU so I went with a CX again. It lasted me 3 years so I'm not complaining.
It lasted you three years - which is terrible for a PSU - and cost you a $500 GPU. Not worth $500 today of course, but you're still out a tidy sum for anything matching or exceeding its performance. Is that worth it compared to spending £30-40 more on a better PSU? Of course not. You would have been better off going for a cheaper GPU and a better PSU - at least then you would be sure this won't happen again in 2-3 years, and you could focus your money on upgrading the GPU.
 
Yeah, well. You have a point. I bought a new CXM from Amazon for £80. I really just don't have the money for a higher quality one right now. I checked the price range of S tier and Tier 1 PSUs and it was too much. I will definitely upgrade it and keep the CX as a spare in a month, two or three. I might go EVGA. Also, it was definitely the VGA that killed the PSU. But if you really think it shouldn't happen, I will upgrade soon.

Right now I got a 1060 6 GB as a placeholder for £150 and I am trying to find a place where they could repair my 980 Ti and hopefully it's not a crazy price. If that doesn't work, I will eventually get a better GPU. I don't really play anything which needs a high end GPU at the moment.
 
Good luck finding a place that repairs GPU's. I've never heard of a shop doing it on their own. Its always been a sent off for warranty thing. No shop would have a schematic of a graphics card or any graphics card. There might be a few things a good electrician that is worth his salt can test and have a look at but without schematics he's wasting his time by trying to find the problem if you don't know what it is.

You're better off contacting the manufacturer and asking for a quote on an out of warranty warranty repair job. It will save you money as getting a good electrician who knows enough to even look at the card won't be cheap.


For £80 I would of bought an EVGA GQ - I have used many of these in client builds and they are still going strong. Their OEM is FSP which are one of the best players out there even though they tend to be underrated and ignored by people alot because they don't throw tonnes of money into their PR like corsair and other big companies do.
 
Thanks for the PSU suggestion. I will save it for the future. What's a PSU you recommend for up to £150?

I know there's no official repair services but I know a pretty good electrician and I want him to have a look just in case.I probably won't bother sending it to Nvidia for repair since there is a good chance the price is crazy high. Most likely going to save up for a 1080 after getting some other upgrades like an SSD, GPU liquid cooling and a better PSU.
 
Yeah, well. You have a point. I bought a new CXM from Amazon for £80. I really just don't have the money for a higher quality one right now. I checked the price range of S tier and Tier 1 PSUs and it was too much. I will definitely upgrade it and keep the CX as a spare in a month, two or three. I might go EVGA. Also, it was definitely the VGA that killed the PSU. But if you really think it shouldn't happen, I will upgrade soon.

Right now I got a 1060 6 GB as a placeholder for £150 and I am trying to find a place where they could repair my 980 Ti and hopefully it's not a crazy price. If that doesn't work, I will eventually get a better GPU. I don't really play anything which needs a high end GPU at the moment.

For that money you can buy an EVGA G+ 650w unit and that is a load better than the Corsair :) I have two 650w's and two 850w models and they are brilliant units. I believe Scan or Ebuyer sales them at a decent price..

As for the GPU, the G Gaming series of Gigabyte cards haven't for me been a good card to use at all... Stick with something like an EVGA SC or FTW or a MSI Gaming X model. Those coolers are amazing and much better than the Gigabyte side of things.

EVGA G+ 650w PSU Buy it :) £80, £10 off :)
 
I would first check whether all cables are OK and connectors are seated properly. Update motherboard BIOS. You can start and run the system without a GPU because i7 6700K has iGPU - before it boots enter the BIOS and find sub-menu where you can select between PEG (real GPU) and IGP (integrated GPU). Select IPG, save and exit BIOS. This particular menu should be somewhere in advanced options under graphic peripherals or something similar. Thus you can find out whether the rest of the components work. Check voltages with HWinfo.
 
...or this for a ~100£

What will be you PC configuration after all thTX 1e replacements for long term usage?

Okay... Damn. I actually did fuck up.

Specs I will have:

CPU: I7 6700k
Motherboard: z390 A Pro
GPU: GTX 1080 MSI/EVGA (not sure yet)
PSU: Something high on the PSU tier list. Maybe your suggestion.
Case: NZXT H510
GPU Luqid Cooling: Probably going for CoolerMaster but I haven't looked into it that much yet.
 
I would say that a 650W will do the job just fine for this, but that particular EVGA SuperNova G3 750W is the same price with 650W model... so...

 
I would first check whether all cables are OK and connectors are seated properly. Update motherboard BIOS. You can start and run the system without a GPU because i7 6700K has iGPU - before it boots enter the BIOS and find sub-menu where you can select between PEG (real GPU) and IGP (integrated GPU). Select IPG, save and exit BIOS. This particular menu should be somewhere in advanced options under graphic peripherals or something similar. Thus you can find out whether the rest of the components work. Check voltages with HWinfo.

I actually didn't know this. I thanks a lot. Now I can use my PC 2 days before my GPU comes.
 
did you not check the PSU tier list in my signature?
 
did you not check the PSU tier list in my signature?
Is the EVGA G3 that bad? People keep recommending it... That list is for the specific ones or all the line? I mean the G3 550W, 650W, 750W...
 
Is the EVGA G3 that bad? People keep recommending it... That list is for the specific ones or all the line? I mean the G3 550W, 650W, 750W...
Not sure he was talking to you, but maybe in general the OP ( people should quote the person you are talking to unless it is the post above) as the G3 PSUs (that 750W you linked) is fine...550W too...

 
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Not sure he was talking to you, but maybe in general the OP ( people should quote the person you are talking to unless it is the post above) as the G3 PSUs (that 750W you linked) is fine...550W too...
I'm quiet sure he was not talking to me but the OP. I just ask because I saw the G3 550W on D-Tier list, so...
 
Yeah, well. You have a point. I bought a new CXM from Amazon for £80. I really just don't have the money for a higher quality one right now. I checked the price range of S tier and Tier 1 PSUs and it was too much. I will definitely upgrade it and keep the CX as a spare in a month, two or three. I might go EVGA. Also, it was definitely the VGA that killed the PSU. But if you really think it shouldn't happen, I will upgrade soon.

Right now I got a 1060 6 GB as a placeholder for £150 and I am trying to find a place where they could repair my 980 Ti and hopefully it's not a crazy price. If that doesn't work, I will eventually get a better GPU. I don't really play anything which needs a high end GPU at the moment.
Okay... Damn. I actually did fuck up.

Specs I will have:

CPU: I7 6700k
Motherboard: z390 A Pro
GPU: GTX 1080 MSI/EVGA (not sure yet)
PSU: Something high on the PSU tier list. Maybe your suggestion.
Case: NZXT H510
GPU Luqid Cooling: Probably going for CoolerMaster but I haven't looked into it that much yet.
You are demonstrating a classic example of the PSU output fallacy: you've been paying for wattage you don't need rather than quality, and all you have to show for it is a dead GPU and PSU. A PC like that will - in a worst-case scenario - maybe pull 400W from the wall. My system with a much more power-hungry R9 Fury X and relatively comparable Ryzen 5 1600X pulls around 400W at the wall during normal gaming. If I were to guess you would probably be closer to 300W than 400W in actual in-game power draw. Also, remember that PSU ratings are for output, while at-wall power is input power which includes the efficiency losses from your PSU. In other words, my 400W under load with an 80+ Gold PSU is likely somewhere around 357W internal draw.

This is an old mode of thinking that was common (and useful) around a decade ago, when PSU ratings where generally BS, and you couldn't trust a PSU to deliver its rated output. This is no longer the case today, at least for decent quality PSUs. Also, component manufacturer "minimum PSU" ratings are equally BS, or at least padded to infinity and beyond, as they want to ensure that nobody blows up their new component due to having a shitty, low-end GPU or having a million HDDs or other power-hungry hardware. Real-world power draw from reviews is a far better indicator of PSU needs than a manufacturer spec. AnandTech measured 335W at-wall in their 1080FE review, and that's with an old overclocked HEDT CPU (i7-4960X).

There are tons of good PSU choices with good quality and reasonable outputs (500-750W) these days. Even 750W is complete overkill for any non-HEDT PC unless you are doing ridiculous overclocking (though even a maxed out 9900K and 2080Ti would struggle to exceed 600W in a power virus test). As such, buying a lower output, higher quality PSU is the only reasonable approach.

Of course there are arguments for having a higher total output, such as having room to upgrade (largely moot, as >300W GPUs aren't likely to become common any time soon, and 550W is plenty for >99% of hardware combinations), and noise in terms of having a higher rated "semi-passive" mode (though any 135mm or 140mm fan of decent quality will be inaudible over a common GPU). The chief reason for PSU overprovisioning is to counteract capacitor aging, as the max output is likely to drop a bit over the lifetime of the PSU. In other words, buying a 450W PSU for a PC routinely pulling up to 400W will work, but might not work for five years. Boosting that number to 550 or 650 gives a decent safety margin. But even there, 750W is overkill.

People need to stop making stupid PSU buying decisions.

Also, I seriously doubt your GPU killed your PSU - the GPU might have died first, but unless id had a serious manufacturing fault, the PSU is the most likely culprit as to why it failed in the first place.
 
You are demonstrating a classic example of the PSU output fallacy: you've been paying for wattage you don't need rather than quality, and all you have to show for it is a dead GPU and PSU. A PC like that will - in a worst-case scenario - maybe pull 400W from the wall. My system with a much more power-hungry R9 Fury X and relatively comparable Ryzen 5 1600X pulls around 400W at the wall during normal gaming. If I were to guess you would probably be closer to 300W than 400W in actual in-game power draw. Also, remember that PSU ratings are for output, while at-wall power is input power which includes the efficiency losses from your PSU. In other words, my 400W under load with an 80+ Gold PSU is likely somewhere around 357W internal draw.

This is an old mode of thinking that was common (and useful) around a decade ago, when PSU ratings where generally BS, and you couldn't trust a PSU to deliver its rated output. This is no longer the case today, at least for decent quality PSUs. Also, component manufacturer "minimum PSU" ratings are equally BS, or at least padded to infinity and beyond, as they want to ensure that nobody blows up their new component due to having a shitty, low-end GPU or having a million HDDs or other power-hungry hardware. Real-world power draw from reviews is a far better indicator of PSU needs than a manufacturer spec. AnandTech measured 335W at-wall in their 1080FE review, and that's with an old overclocked HEDT CPU (i7-4960X).

There are tons of good PSU choices with good quality and reasonable outputs (500-750W) these days. Even 750W is complete overkill for any non-HEDT PC unless you are doing ridiculous overclocking (though even a maxed out 9900K and 2080Ti would struggle to exceed 600W in a power virus test). As such, buying a lower output, higher quality PSU is the only reasonable approach.

Of course there are arguments for having a higher total output, such as having room to upgrade (largely moot, as >300W GPUs aren't likely to become common any time soon, and 550W is plenty for >99% of hardware combinations), and noise in terms of having a higher rated "semi-passive" mode (though any 135mm or 140mm fan of decent quality will be inaudible over a common GPU). The chief reason for PSU overprovisioning is to counteract capacitor aging, as the max output is likely to drop a bit over the lifetime of the PSU. In other words, buying a 450W PSU for a PC routinely pulling up to 400W will work, but might not work for five years. Boosting that number to 550 or 650 gives a decent safety margin. But even there, 750W is overkill.

People need to stop making stupid PSU buying decisions.

Also, I seriously doubt your GPU killed your PSU - the GPU might have died first, but unless id had a serious manufacturing fault, the PSU is the most likely culprit as to why it failed in the first place.

Wow... Well, this is the first time I'm hearing this. I could have saved myself a lot of money. Better late than never I guess.
 
Wow... Well, this is the first time I'm hearing this. I could have saved myself a lot of money. Better late than never I guess.
Sadly, a lot of people (even on these forums) keep recommending massively overpowered PSUs for no reason other than that it used to be smart back in the day. Heck, the entire >1000W PSU market (outside of mining, which is largely dead anyhow, and extreme LN2 overclocking) is held up by people buying stupidly overkill hardware. 750W is sufficient for most dual GPU setups today, and the most common single GPU setups (say, a GTX 1660 or RTX 2060 with an SSD, an HDD, 16GB of RAM, some RGB and a reasonable CPU around 95W) would struggle to exceed 300W internal power draw under normal gaming usage. PC components these days are very, very power efficient, and due to the limitation of modern process technologies, they don't generally scale all that much when overclocked either. The days of 500W overclocked GPUs are long gone. There are of course exceptions, like the 9900K (which, to be frank, is a power hog even at "stock" on most motherboards), but those are the exception, not the norm. Also, it's worthwhile to remember that no normal workload stresses the CPU and GPU both at 100%. Gaming is generally 100% GPU and a medium CPU load. Rendering generally stresses either GPU or CPU 100%, but rarely both. And so on.

My rule for calculating the PSU requirements of a build go roughly like this: real world power CPU power draw from a review + real world GPU power draw from a review + 15-25W for the motherboard and RAM, 5W for each SSD, 10W for each 3.5" HDD + a couple of watts per fan + 5W for each AIO pump + whatever is needed for any other add-in-cards, components or power-hungry periperhals (usually not applicable). If overclocking, look at power draw numbers from someone overclocking the same component, and perhaps add 20% for safety/bad luck in the silicon lottery. Sum that all up, then add 20% to the total for some margin (as menitoned above, running your PSU for extended periods at 100% load will shorten its lifespan), and you're good to go. Not all these numbers reflect actual max power draw for each component (NVMe SSDs often peak at 5-7W, some fans draw 5W or more; 3.5" HDDs can peak at 15 or even 20W during spin-up), but they are more than sufficient for calculating the sum total power draw of the PC under normal usage.

So, for your proposed hardware (I'm assuming you mean the i7-9700K, as a 6700K can't run on a Z390 board):
  • i7-9700K: TPU says 41W idle and 180W running Cinebench nT for the full system on a Z390 board, so ~140W. As this is far above TDP, this test result likely reflects MCE or similar unlocks, and is reliable. Overclocked to 5.1 GHz the 180W number jumps to 237W, so the CPU draw jumps to about 200W total. These full-system power measurements include PSU losses, so these numbers are perfectly safe to work with.
  • (in case you actually mean the i7-6700K, but with a compatible motherboard: Hexus says 23W idle and 99W video encoding for the full system on a Z170 board, so ~80W stock, but this varies with motherboard power settings, so let's stick to the 91W TDP. Don't have overclocked numbers for this.)
  • GTX 1080: Let's assume you're going for an overclocked model, so I'm basing my numbers on the TPU Zotac AMP! Extreme review, which measures out at 245W peak gaming, and 222W average gaming. Comparable numbers for the non-overclocked FE card are 166W and 184W, so this is pushing it for a 1080. Still, let's say 245W for safety, or 190W if running a lower end card at stock clocks.
  • Cooling: if you're going for an AIO on your GPU, you'll likely have one on your CPU too, so 10W for pumps, and let's say 15W for four 120mm fans.
  • Motherboard and RAM: 25W. This is a rough estimate, but unless your motherboard has something crazy like 10GbE networking, or you're running >4000MT/s RAM at 1.5V or more, it will do.
  • RGB? I'm guessing yes, so another 10W for that.
  • You didn't mention storage, so I'm assuming the relatively standard 1 SSD (5W) + 1 HDD (10W).
That leaves us with a total of either 486W (405W+20%, 9700K stock + 1080 stock), or 624W (520W+20%, 9700K OC + 1080 OC). In other words a 500 or 550W PSU would be perfectly fine for the former configuration, and a 650W one for the latter. If you meant the 6700K, subtract 60W from each number. Also note that even these numbers are overblown: adding up power draws like this is not how power draw in PCs actually works. As said before, no normal consumer workload will stress your CPU and GPU to 100%, so these numbers being based on max per-component power draw for the key components means significant built-in safety margins even before the added 20% - the 20% is for longevity, meaning your PSU can age to where it loses 20% of its output capacity (which will take many, many years for a good unit) and still handle your setup just fine. To add some perspective to this: TPU's 9700K review has full-system power measurements while gaming with a 1080 Ti, and they hit 340W stock or 376W when overclocked to 5.1 GHz. At the wall, including PSU losses. And that's with a significantly more power hungry GPU than the regular 1080.
 
All I can say is I normally tend to overspec my PSU's by around 10-20% based on wattage demand, this way I don't have to worry about it running at or close to 100% all the time which isn't great for one. Nominal operation is for one to be loaded around 80% of it's rated wattage on average, not too much and yet it's not wasting money on something you really don't need based on cost to get. I've never had a PSU go out (Yet) except for one waaaay back that was defective - That was well before I got into OC'ing stuff.
Every PSU I've had aside from that one still works to this day just fine.

Also helps in that if you decide to carry the unit over to a new build chances are it will be OK for that too.

Now..... I will admit with this build I'm typing on ATM it's got a 1600W unit in use and yes it's been used for Extreme OC'ing before. However since I already had two of these PSU's I just popped one in here instead of having to buy another and letting the other 1600W unit do the XOC thing.
If that one ever goes out I'll still have this one to run with all that and will get something more mundane for this build.
 
Sadly, a lot of people (even on these forums) keep recommending massively overpowered PSUs for no reason other than that it used to be smart back in the day. Heck, the entire >1000W PSU market (outside of mining, which is largely dead anyhow, and extreme LN2 overclocking) is held up by people buying stupidly overkill hardware. 750W is sufficient for most dual GPU setups today, and the most common single GPU setups (say, a GTX 1660 or RTX 2060 with an SSD, an HDD, 16GB of RAM, some RGB and a reasonable CPU around 95W) would struggle to exceed 300W internal power draw under normal gaming usage. PC components these days are very, very power efficient, and due to the limitation of modern process technologies, they don't generally scale all that much when overclocked either. The days of 500W overclocked GPUs are long gone. There are of course exceptions, like the 9900K (which, to be frank, is a power hog even at "stock" on most motherboards), but those are the exception, not the norm. Also, it's worthwhile to remember that no normal workload stresses the CPU and GPU both at 100%. Gaming is generally 100% GPU and a medium CPU load. Rendering generally stresses either GPU or CPU 100%, but rarely both. And so on.

My rule for calculating the PSU requirements of a build go roughly like this: real world power CPU power draw from a review + real world GPU power draw from a review + 15-25W for the motherboard and RAM, 5W for each SSD, 10W for each 3.5" HDD + a couple of watts per fan + 5W for each AIO pump + whatever is needed for any other add-in-cards, components or power-hungry periperhals (usually not applicable). If overclocking, look at power draw numbers from someone overclocking the same component, and perhaps add 20% for safety/bad luck in the silicon lottery. Sum that all up, then add 20% to the total for some margin (as menitoned above, running your PSU for extended periods at 100% load will shorten its lifespan), and you're good to go. Not all these numbers reflect actual max power draw for each component (NVMe SSDs often peak at 5-7W, some fans draw 5W or more; 3.5" HDDs can peak at 15 or even 20W during spin-up), but they are more than sufficient for calculating the sum total power draw of the PC under normal usage.

So, for your proposed hardware (I'm assuming you mean the i7-9700K, as a 6700K can't run on a Z390 board):
  • i7-9700K: TPU says 41W idle and 180W running Cinebench nT for the full system on a Z390 board, so ~140W. As this is far above TDP, this test result likely reflects MCE or similar unlocks, and is reliable. Overclocked to 5.1 GHz the 180W number jumps to 237W, so the CPU draw jumps to about 200W total. These full-system power measurements include PSU losses, so these numbers are perfectly safe to work with.
  • (in case you actually mean the i7-6700K, but with a compatible motherboard: Hexus says 23W idle and 99W video encoding for the full system on a Z170 board, so ~80W stock, but this varies with motherboard power settings, so let's stick to the 91W TDP. Don't have overclocked numbers for this.)
  • GTX 1080: Let's assume you're going for an overclocked model, so I'm basing my numbers on the TPU Zotac AMP! Extreme review, which measures out at 245W peak gaming, and 222W average gaming. Comparable numbers for the non-overclocked FE card are 166W and 184W, so this is pushing it for a 1080. Still, let's say 245W for safety, or 190W if running a lower end card at stock clocks.
  • Cooling: if you're going for an AIO on your GPU, you'll likely have one on your CPU too, so 10W for pumps, and let's say 15W for four 120mm fans.
  • Motherboard and RAM: 25W. This is a rough estimate, but unless your motherboard has something crazy like 10GbE networking, or you're running >4000MT/s RAM at 1.5V or more, it will do.
  • RGB? I'm guessing yes, so another 10W for that.
  • You didn't mention storage, so I'm assuming the relatively standard 1 SSD (5W) + 1 HDD (10W).
That leaves us with a total of either 486W (405W+20%, 9700K stock + 1080 stock), or 624W (520W+20%, 9700K OC + 1080 OC). In other words a 500 or 550W PSU would be perfectly fine for the former configuration, and a 650W one for the latter. If you meant the 6700K, subtract 60W from each number. Also note that even these numbers are overblown: adding up power draws like this is not how power draw in PCs actually works. As said before, no normal consumer workload will stress your CPU and GPU to 100%, so these numbers being based on max per-component power draw for the key components means significant built-in safety margins even before the added 20% - the 20% is for longevity, meaning your PSU can age to where it loses 20% of its output capacity (which will take many, many years for a good unit) and still handle your setup just fine. To add some perspective to this: TPU's 9700K review has full-system power measurements while gaming with a 1080 Ti, and they hit 340W stock or 376W when overclocked to 5.1 GHz. At the wall, including PSU losses. And that's with a significantly more power hungry GPU than the regular 1080.

I am definitely saving your reply somewhere to use as reference in the future. I suppose for the setup I have right now I probably don't even need 400W then. i7 6700K, 1060 6GB, z170, 8 GB RAM, CPU pump. Also, yeah I got confused. I will be getting a 9K CPU for the z390 board in the future. Right now I'm staying with a z170.

Won't be making this mistake again in that case. Thanks for the words of wisdom.
 
I am definitely saving your reply somewhere to use as reference in the future. I suppose for the setup I have right now I probably don't even need 400W then. i7 6700K, 1060 6GB, z170, 8 GB RAM, CPU pump. Also, yeah I got confused. I will be getting a 9K CPU for the z390 board in the future. Right now I'm staying with a z170.

Won't be making this mistake again in that case. Thanks for the words of wisdom.
No problem, that's what the forums are for :)

The GTX 1060 is a very efficient card, so if I were to guesstimate I would say your current setup probably consumes around 250W at the wall while gaming. As such, yes, a good quality 400W PSU would be entirely sufficient - it's just that there are sadly very very few high quality units in that wattage range. Quality units tend to start at 550W or so - which is still entirely reasonable, and allows for headroom to upgrade past your current ~120W GPU. And thankfully most PSU manufacturers are starting to flesh out their lower wattage ranges - a few years ago it wasn't uncommon that you had to buy 750W or more if you wanted a modern PSU design with good efficiency.
 
Unfortunately I am kind of tight on money since I also bought a new GPU so I went with a CX again. It lasted me 3 years so I'm not complaining.


Youre asking for it!

I would of sent the new motherboard back.
 
Nominal operation is for one to be loaded around 80% of it's rated wattage on average, not too much and yet it's not wasting money on something you really don't need based on cost to get.

the nominal/optimal load for PSU's are 50%, ie. where they are the most efficient.
 
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