Low temperatures Emergency System Shutdown

Zalis

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Aug 8, 2014
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Recently put together my first gaming build nothing special fairly budget. After two weeks of normal operation it started performing emergency shutdowns whenever I put it under any kind of load (Borderlands 2, Vicera Cleanup Detail ect.). Here comes the strange part. I've been using several programs to monitor the temperature of my CPU and while it does get warm, 50-55 Celsius, it's never hit 60, at least according to the temp monitors.
Here's the build
AMD FX-6300
XFX R9 270 Core edition
Gigabyte FXA990 UD3
EVGA NEX650G
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
Zalman Z9 Plus
Seagate Barracuda 1TB
G.SKILL Value Series 8GB (2 x 4GB)
I've already remounted the CPU cooler once making sure to spread the paste nice and evenly. The following is a list of temperature monitoring software I've used.
HWmonitor
AMD overdrive
SIW
Core Temperature
CPU thermometer
Speccy
 
Solution
Maybe you are busting the 20A limit on one of the PSU's 12V rails.

If you are not doing so already, you might want to split the GPU load between 12v2 and 12v4 with EPS12 from 12v1 and the rest of your system on 12v3.

Zalis

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...Complete n00b on the topic of psu rails and such, do you mind explaining a bit?
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator
Your PSU splits its 12V output in four groups and each group can provide up to 20A. Your GPU and CPU get most of their power from the 12V rail. Your CPU will require about 10-12A and your GPU may require another 12-15A more. If both are sharing the same 12V output, you may be attempting to draw 22-25A from that output and the PSU shuts down.

Looking at an actual image of the PSU, instead of labeling rails, they split them between ATX/CPU1, VGA1/2, VGA3/4 and CPU2/SATA/PATA so what you probably want to do is use ATX/CPU1 for the motherboard and VGA1 + VGA3 for the GPU.
 

Zalis

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Aug 8, 2014
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The provided cables don't split on the end that plugs into the PSU only on the end that plugs into the GPU.
 

Zalis

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Though Could I use my Second CPU cable that does split instead? (the port on my GPU is 6 pin but there's a small space next to it that the 8 pin cable could probably fit. Might be intended to...)
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator
You use two separate cables from VGA1 and VGA3 to your R9-270 which should have two PCIE power connectors.

The EPS12 (CPU1/2) cables are not interchangeable with 6/8-pin PCIE: they have different keying to prevent mismatched use because the side the 12V and ground pins are on are inverted. Forcing the plug in will short 12V to ground.
 

Zalis

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The R9 270 has only one connector, side mounted six pin. The 270x which was just a touch out of my budget does have two connectors...Also why would it start now after running smoothly for two weeks?
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

One possibility is break-in: the way components behave can change considerably over the first few days of operation. This is why components used in precision instruments often go through a pre-aging/burn-in process to get their long-term stable characteristics.

Multiply those changes by the number of new components you brought together, add all other potential variables that come in this equation such as line input voltage and ambient temperature.

Another possibility is simply a slow failure starting to come up, which is somewhat of a variant of the break-in theory but instead of settling around stable long-term values, things just keep drifting further off-specs until something fails.