Power supply choke

[julioshingon]

Hi

I built this workstation system. It has a 650W corsair psu. When I turn it on, I hear the fans go full blast then the system goes completely silent for about two seconds then turns on again. Once the system is up, it appears to be stable.

I should have plenty of power. All I have drawing power on this thing is a Phenom ii 955, ram, and hard drive.

Should I be wary of this PSU?

 

[Twoboxer]

. . . and some form of graphics draw.

Anyhow, off the top with these symptoms it sounds like the mobo doesn't feel comfortable with its settings and is making an adjustment before it goes forward with post and boot.

Try clearing CMOS and loading/saving default settings.

What were the results of your stress testing on this build? If you didn't run them, please do so now: CPUID's Hardware Monitor to watch temps. Prime95 to stress cpu and with "Detect Rounding Errors" checked to test memory, then Furmark to stress gpu, then both.

Of course it could still be the psu

 

[julioshingon]

I never did stress testing because I didn't overclock and it's running on integrated graphics. I built this computer for my dad and since he doesn't play games, integrated graphics were good enough. The temps are fine and everything is fine when the system is doing heavy computing. This only happens right before POST.

I'll try clearing the CMOS this weekend when I'm at home. If that doesn't work... I'll have to break out the oscilloscope and see what's up with the PSU on load.

Thanks Twoboxer.

 

[julioshingon]

Best answer selected by julioshingon.

 

[Twoboxer]

If you've got a scope and know how to use it, that's great. You'd be the first user here who may actually be able to diagnose a bad/flaky psu without just swapping it out lol.

Note that the Prime95 stress test is for more than heat. It often detects memory issues that, eg, memtest86 misses. And the load is enough to stress mobo timings and memory voltages as well, even when not OCing.

 

[julioshingon]

Hi Twoboxer,

Fixed it! You were spot on about the CMOS.
"CMOS checksum = bad
Press F2 to reload default values"

I thought I would finally get to put my electrical engineering knowledge to work.

I know that I should do some more stress testing on this build; but so far, CPUz and my BIOS report the memory timings and voltages that i expect.

I'm about to put in a Xigmatek HDT heatsink (AMD stock fan has a high frequency squeal) , so I'll probably run Prime95 after that.

Thanks again!

 

[Twoboxer]

NP! Glad our work here is done.

But please do run those stress testshen the build is "finished".