Asus anti surge protection

serberous

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Dec 14, 2013
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10,510
this is just background, you can skip it if you want.
recently, my rig began rebooting (somewhat randomly) although mostly when doing graphical things, and would state the board was getting a surge from the psu and restarted in order to blah blah blah. needless to say, I almost rma'd a perfectly good 780, at the height of the issue I made the system reboot precisely, by running EVGA OcScanner on a small resolution. but after going through the internet I read the issues with the asus anti surge and turned it off, and am now able to sustain core burner at 1080p with x8 MSAA, been running for 20 minutes straight now as I type this without any reboots.

system specs
asus z87-pro
4770k
EVGA 780SC w/ acx
corsair AX860i
16gb corsair platinum
win 8.1 and 7 (would also crash when I tried with ubuntu)

now the question, does the anti surge really register as many false positives as I've read on the web? Can I safely turn it off and not worry about it? Why did I mostly get errors while using gpu intensive stuff? Is my psu reliable enough that I can rule it out as actually sending bad voltages?
using asus duel intelligent processors my voltages are as follows
+12V = 11.904 or 12
+5V = 5 or 5.04
+3V = steady 3.264
I also run my pc from a belkin surge protecting wall plug.

any thoughts on this? sorry if I sound slow on this, but hardware always tends to leave me in the dust when it comes to comprehension.

also, this was built this summer, so any reasoning as to why this just started recently?

and it appears I spoke far too soon, even after disabling the anti surge it continues to reboot, can somebody please tell me why?
 
Solution


The double power cycle after a cold boot is normal, but...
They're not false positives. The anti-surge feature correctly detects power surges but it detects them at a threshold which is far too low. Furthermore, these surges are a natural consequence of rapid changes in current and voltage levels that are characteristic of many powerful GPUs. In other words, these surges are not only safe, they are expected, harmless, and often completely unavoidable with even the best PSU. These problems are not experienced with less power hungry components.

Asus' Anti-Surge protection can be safely turned off if there is an external surge protector connected to the system.
 

serberous

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Dec 14, 2013
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10,510
Thanks Pinhedd for the quick responce, but I spoke far too soon, my pc continues to reboot itself during gpu ussage, but now that I disabled surge protection it gives me no message, just boots up windows again
 


please make sure that you have the latest UEFI firmware installed. Asus bundles firmware for their DSPs (the intelligent processors) with the UEFI firmware package, so that should bring everything up to date.
 

serberous

Honorable
Dec 14, 2013
6
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okay, I've updated my bios, went through and once again turned the anti surge off, and yet it continues to reboot anytime I run something graphics intensive, and will sometimes reboot instantly after turning back on, sort of like a double reboot...
 


The double power cycle after a cold boot is normal, but power loss during heavy operation is not. This is most likely a faulty component. If you have spare motherboards, PSUs, or GPUs lying around, try swapping them out to isolate the problematic component.
 
Solution

raja@asus

Distinguished
Sep 28, 2011
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Just some anecdotal info:

Regarding the Anti-surge feature; it uses the onboard super IO chip to determine voltage levels. The Achilles heel of this system is that if multiple polling tools (voltage and temp monitoring software) are used simultaneously, it can cause erroneous readings due to poling contention. So if using the anti-surge feature, one is best advised not to run multiple monitoring tools at the same time. The feature does work of course, but there are limitations to what one can do with the super IO.

The WS boards have an onboard ADC with a sampling time of 4us tied back to software and UEFI (the feature is known as Dr, Power) - which is a more flexible/advanced solution and it makes sense for the target audience of the WS boards.

-Raja
 


That's some excellent information. I'll keep that in mind for the future as this question does creep up a lot
 

Blackstarre2

Reputable
Apr 26, 2015
1
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4,510


I built a gaming rig using the Z87-Plus MB and have been having the same issues as described in this thread. Shutdown with and a subsequent power surge warning when it reboots, disabled the feature on the MB and the system still shuts down. Always seems to happen during gaming that has intense graphic needs. Motherboard has been replaced (in Feb 2015), power supply has been replaced (March 2015). Is there a new firmware update or any other resolutions to this issue or is this just the wrong MB for high end gaming rigs?

 

Nick_522

Reputable
Jan 13, 2016
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4,510


Thanks for the info Raja. I do have a question, though. I've been experiencing similar issues but I don't game. I typically have a movie or TV series running on the machine and maybe jump on the internet simultaneously when the anti-surge kicks in and shuts down my machine. My history of this seems to be very different from everyone else's - seems like the story is 1-2 months after changing the mobo or building the rig with the Asus Motherboard this starts occuring. However, my machine was running smoothly for a year or so before this started occuring and eventually blew a power supply. I bought a new, better, power supply and this one lasted in the 3-4 month range before the issue started occurring again.

Since it seems that this is an issue when websites with annoying graphics-heavy ads are running at the same time a movie (not a high-def one or anything just a crap DVD rip from one of my own) I'm wondering if I just need an upgrade over the Asus on-board GPU. Penny for your thoughts?

 


Do you have any information on the specific numbers persay that anti-surge looks for? What exactly causes it to display the anti-surge message? Obviously a voltage spike, but by how many volts, or in how much time?
 

Voliax

Commendable
Jan 1, 2017
8
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1,510
i have 2 desktops.

first desktop has gamemax case - asus z97 pro wifi ac + i7 4790 + 32gb ram + 650w psu cooler master + nvidia970
second desktop has different case - asus z97-c + different i7 4790 + same rams + same brand another 650w psu cooler master + same brand another nvidia970

2 desktops has the same problem. i bought another nvidia970 and antisurge problem still occurs. i also connected different UPS and tried without any ups. i have latest bios upgrade.

first desktop pc only restarts when i try to play a game.
second desktop pc shutting down and sometimes restarts and says anti surge problem.

Any suggestions?