Asus power supply surge detected (Suspected faulty PSU and not oversensitive motherboard)

BillyMaJib

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Jun 28, 2014
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Hey, recently I've been having a problem where my ASUS motherboard constantly says it activated the power supply surge protection and reboots.

While I've seen a lot of posts on various sites talking about how this is an awful feature and always has false positives, this didn't pop up until recently, I have been running this PC for about a year now and it just now decided to show up.

I have made no recent installations however, the first time this happened was a time when I (probably foolishly) demanded a bit much from my PC having several graphically intensive programs open at once, the computer turned off and rebooted saying the power supply surge protection had acted.

I'm not sure if it's possible that the power supply is partially damaged, or if it's just not giving enough power to the gpu or something? I can run the computer just fine on the internet with Steam running, but if I launch a graphically intensive game it loads the graphics fully well at full FPS but shuts off seconds later.

I can play less graphically intensive games for a duration before it decides to shut itself off.

Is it the power supply that is faulty? Should I just turn off ASUS anti-surge protection even though this problem just started recently with no modifications made to cause it to happen?

It just happened while I was just watching a video on youtube, my system had been on for a while at that point, and I had played a game that doesn't require a very strong computer at all for a while before this, maybe this means that even when just on desktop it will EVENTUALLY reboot?

When it happens like this it turns itself on and off 3 or so times in quick succession before it actually turns on ready to actually start again.

My specs:
i5 4670
Amd Sapphire 7950
Asus z87-c
TX750w (corsair)
2x4gb ram
 
Solution
That is strange. I see you have a high quality PSU, however, even high quality products still have a failure rate...it's just smaller than cheap products. I would guess you might try and turn off the surge protection, or test the PSU if you are able to. That PSU should be more than enough to power your system. But not if it has gone bad. I really feel like its the surge protection feature. I hope this helps.
That is strange. I see you have a high quality PSU, however, even high quality products still have a failure rate...it's just smaller than cheap products. I would guess you might try and turn off the surge protection, or test the PSU if you are able to. That PSU should be more than enough to power your system. But not if it has gone bad. I really feel like its the surge protection feature. I hope this helps.
 
Solution

BillyMaJib

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Jun 28, 2014
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So there's no potential risk if I turn it off? From what I've gathered there's an (extremely unlikely I guess) scenario where both the PSU and the motherboard (not bios part) fail to stop a power failure like this.
 
Honestly I don't know enough about motherboard surge protection. I mean I would think there has to be a risk since its on there. The fail safe way to know is to test your PSU first before turning it off. I feel like the chances of your system frying is unlikely, seeing as you have a high quality PSU. But there are no guarantees.
 

BillyMaJib

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Jun 28, 2014
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Ok I decided to turn it off because of the overwhelming amount of people who say it's a useless feature, hopefully stuff doesn't go bad the instant I do anything...

I'm hoping the combined efforts of the physical motherboard and the psu will keep stuff form burning up into a crisp.
 

BillyMaJib

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Jun 28, 2014
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I launched a random game and it lasted for a while 30 seconds longer before the PC shut itself off again.

So while it is slightly more sensitive than the actual power failsafes it was still correct.

I guess the psu is broken after all, since I dunno if a broken GPU or CPU would be able to run the game flawlessly, albeit only for 30 seconds. It's definitely not the ram, could be the motherboard itself maybe? No clue.