PC shuts down minutes after booting, at my wit's' end

boblighte

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Sep 20, 2014
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Okay, here we go.

I bought a pre-built gaming PC about two years ago. It was fine for what I spent, but I wanted more power, so a few months ago, I purchased a new CPU and GPU. When the GPU arrived, I realized that my PSU didn't have enough wattage to handle it, so I invested in a new one of those as well.

I installed everything myself, using the Internet as my guide. I got everything up and running with no problems. Not at first.

Fast forward a few weeks. I was playing Fez (not the most graphically intensive game), and the computer died on me. It restarted instantly, and I didn't think much of it. Then, this week, I tried to play Darksiders and it crashed again. And again. So I went to the Internet again, but couldn't figure it out.

I opened my case to make sure everything was still plugged in and saw that, silly me, I'd put the PSU in upside-down, so the fan was blowing out of the bottom of the case. I put it in the right way and powered up my machine, certain that I'd solved the problem.

No dice. Now it dies on me within minutes of being booted up. Sometimes it doesn't even make it through the boot process. I've got no idea what's going on. One time I saw an error that said something went wrong due to overclocking, but I have no idea how to O.C. and I doubt it's something I could have done accidentally.

Specs:
Motherboard: GA-78LMT-USB3
CPU: AMD FX-8350
GPU: AMD R9 270X
PSU: Corsair 750 ATX/EPS Modular
HDD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 2TB, 1x Sandisk 64GB SSD
RAM: 4x 4GB

My CPU temps are around 40C. Nothing feels hot in there. I cleaned out all the dust. I've three case fans, one blowing on the HDDs, one blowing on the mobo, and an outake fan by the mobo.

Help!
 
Solution
Upon doing a little surfing, the only modular 750w Corsair PSU I can find is an RM model, or a HX model Platinum for 170 bucks. My bet goes on the RM, and considering they are horriddddddd PSUs, I'd said it's most certainly the PSU.

I bet if you opened that bad boy up, it's got an LTEC capacitor blown up like a fire cracker in a beer can.

boblighte

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Sep 20, 2014
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The event log doesn't tell me anything besides "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first" and "The previous system shutdown at (whenever) was unexpected." The BSOD viewer doesn't show me anything because I haven't had any BSODs. The system just stops suddenly, like someone pulled the plug.
 

gizzard1987

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Aug 7, 2013
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Sounds to me like you've got a bad PSU. If you've got your old one, try removing the graphics card (so you don't overload the old PSU), then see if it boots up with the old PSU.


What is the wattage of the old PSU?
 

gizzard1987

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Aug 7, 2013
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Upon doing a little surfing, the only modular 750w Corsair PSU I can find is an RM model, or a HX model Platinum for 170 bucks. My bet goes on the RM, and considering they are horriddddddd PSUs, I'd said it's most certainly the PSU.

I bet if you opened that bad boy up, it's got an LTEC capacitor blown up like a fire cracker in a beer can.
 
Solution

boblighte

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Sep 20, 2014
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This is the PSU I have: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ALK3KEM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's a CX750M, and it got pretty good reviews on Amazon. Amazon's ratings have yet to steer me wrong, but I supposed there's a first time for everything.

I just tried removing the CMOS battery for a few minutes and putting it back in (I read somewhere that might help), and I already took the GPU out to see if that would help things. It lasted about ten minutes and died again.

Luckily I do still have my old PSU, it's 400 watts. BRB, I'm gonna go try it out.
 

gizzard1987

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Aug 7, 2013
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The CX is a "good" PSU, but they're just not all that reliable. It's actually in the same tier as the Corsair RM 750 PSU that I thought you had (because you said it was Modular, I assumed full, not semi).

A lot of people on newegg have had bad experiences. Some have been fine, but there are a lot of people saying it's only lasted them a short time.
 

boblighte

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Sep 20, 2014
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I just looked at the one egg reviews on Newegg... looks like I got lucky. Things seem to be running fine with the old PSU so far, though my onboard graphics can't even handle Fez :(

Got a good recommendation for a more reliable PSU?
 

gizzard1987

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Aug 7, 2013
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Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($92.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $92.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-20 23:09 EDT-0400

There ya go. I have an XFX 850w Pro Series 80+ Gold running my build. They're fully modular so you can get rid of extra cables that you don't need, as well as provide you with plenty of power headroom for expansions on down the road.