The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

[Uranium-235]

soooo. my gaming box is dying. I've been pushing this i7 920 (D0) hard, 4.1ghz. Two BFG factory OC'd GTX 285's, and a corsair 850W power supply. I was running it hiiigh voltage, 80-82C under full load (D0 version of the 920 runs this hot, and will only run @ 4ghz under higher voltages)

so earlier this week, it started doing this thing, where it would TURN OFF...then turn back on 3 seconds later. And some games started to lock up. Now I tried to play a multitude of games to narrow the problem and I narrowed the problem down with STALKER (chernobyl). A few seconds of gameplay the audio started to beep and buzz and boop in random speakers. Realizing I put an Audigy 2 between two high clocked and VERY HOT video card. I cooked this card. I thought--awesome problem solved.

next night, after I put it into sleep mode, went to subway, came back and it was off. I hit the power button and it came on for 2 seconds and turned off.
Freaking out I tried switching shit out, not much to switch out, took one video card out, same thing. Disconnected the ATX power connector and reconnected it and....turned on! wow how awesome. Hmm, maybe somethig is loose, so i looked on it aaaaand...one pin had a black burn spot around it, and the pin on the connector from the power supply had hardened, burned plastic, and the wires are darkened. WHAT THE FUCK. This motherboard was $300 and power supply $300. Was I running it too high?

here is the pinout
http://www.smpspowersupply.com/connector_atx_pinout.GIF

its on one the extra 4 of the eps, the +12v1

I took a pick and cleaned it up, the cmos was reset, set that back.

today I plugged it back in, and it did not post. I took the power connector off and the 12v1 next to it was starting to get black

I took the cmos battery off and on and it booted just fine, with cmos reset. I set everything back and booted. Played STALKER for a few hours. It did turn off ONCE

all my voltages seem fine, but i'm worried about my VIN6, which is 1.7v, still not sure what VIN6 is, I know my vin1 is ram, which is fine

I've defaulted everything, clocked it back to standard, except the turbo multiplier to 21, bringing the CPU from 2.66 to 2.8. which is great on air, dosen't get over 40c under load. i'll see if I can take a pic of it, I think my cam batteries are down =/

[Uranium-235]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

think its the heart (PSU) or brain (MB)?

[Uranium-235]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

pics

[c_hegge]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

Probably the motherboard. After all, it does look like an ASUS

The two burned pins are the +12V ones, so the board's been drawing too much current from that rail

[dumpystig]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

The second pic is shitty but I would say your mobo has been sucking a lot of extra current from your PSU through those pins - the burnt condition of the male pins/female sockets will create more resistance to the current flow so things will almost certainly only get worse. Your mobo and PSU are more than likely still OK.
If it was me I would replace the loom/socket from the PSU and the corresponding PCB plug on the mobo.

[popeye]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

The problem is the connector the pins that are black are arcing I would bridge the connections end of problem.

[dumpystig]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

The problem is the connector the pins that are black are arcing I would bridge the connections end of problem.

But then the quick-disconnect functionality of the plug/mobo> <socket/PSU is out the window.

[joshnz]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

The 5 volt rails on my friends pc burnt all the 5V connections of the 20pin atx socket and plug i'm guessing his the gfx card was at fault I soldered some beefy wires the the underside of the board via a 4 pin automotive plug and socket and was sorted.
then the gfx card failed so I guess that was faulty
Found the burnt connectors when investigating low 5v supply.

[mariushm]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

Ok... so it's clear those are 12V wires.

The problem you have is most likely caused by the fact that you have two video cards installed in your computer.

Video cards are supposed to draw up to 75 watts from the PCI-Express slot and whatever extra they need from the 6-pin connectors (75w each max) or 8-pin connectors (150w each max).

Each of your video cards draw up to 190 watts so technically, 150w come from the 6pin connectors and 40 watts from the motherboard. In reality I suspect more power is drawn from the PCI-Express connector so I suspect those 2 wires from the ATX connector were simply overloaded.

What I would do now would be to clean the contacts on the motherboard connector and use one of these :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812162006



This particular extender takes the 24 pin ATX and at the other end there's 20+4 so you still have 2 yellow wires there.

There are cheaper models that have 20 pin input and ouput 24 pin by connecting both yellow wires to a single cable - this is bad but it's fixable for example by taking the yellow wire from a HDD power connector for example and connecting it to the second 12v power wire in the connector. But even so, usually the wires in such 20 pin to 24 pin adapter are thin, and if your current power cable started to melt, those adapters will melt even faster.

The Silverstone cable above looks like it had decent gauge and has the wires separate from the start.

[Uranium-235]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

yes it is an ASUS boad (one of good quality-all polys-and allowing me super OC'ing), but those two 285's are running dual 6 pin PCI-E power connectors from the power supply for the extra draw

oh I forgot to mention this--when I had it overclocked, and it started doing the turning off/on thing, I looked at the voltages in the bios and some were RED. Like 3.5 on my 3.3 and 5.8 on my 5. but my 12 read just fine. I clocked it back to normal and the voltages went down to normal too

something else that I remember now. many months ago I plugged my PSU in and got a big pop, spark and smoke from the back. My boss said it was just built up dust...as the computer worked flawlessly still. maybe some voltage reg got burnt?

[Mad_Professor]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

something else that I remember now. many months ago I plugged my PSU in and got a big pop, spark and smoke from the back. My boss said it was just built up dust...as the computer worked flawlessly still. maybe some voltage reg got burnt?

And you still used?

If I heard big pop/spark I would have RMA that fucking thing.

See if corsair will cover the PSU and damage due to a manufacturer defect.

[shovenose]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

Um, yeah, Corsair should pay for a new mobo and PSU if it sparked. That pricey PSU shouldn't be doing that!

[Uranium-235]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

its over a year old, not sure what warranty it had, but probably over a year

it worked flawlessly after it sparked for months

[Uranium-235]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

well it just turned off on me while playing stalker. Hm i'm not sure if corsair would get me another motherboard. they would probably blame it on a bad motherboard sucking too much juice

[Uranium-235]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

well I just looked at a website where they take min (TX850) apart and i'm somewhat scared

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/fulli...hp?image=35954

I see UCC's, not sure if they're KGZ's or not, the bottom one out in the open looks like KZJ

[c_hegge]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

They are KZE and KY. That's all seasonic use. KZJ has a different colour scheme (black and gold).

[Junk Parts]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

Well I'm no Tech but I also think that the PSU has bit the dust.

[370forlife]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

its over a year old, not sure what warranty it had, but probably over a year

it worked flawlessly after it sparked for months

Corsair's basic units have 3 year warranties. I believe yours has a 5 year.

[Uranium-235]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

here is a closer pic of the connector. the plastic has been getting so hot and cold over and over its brittle and breaks off to the touch

damn thing just turned off on me. I'm not going to tell them I overclocked like I did. I'll try to say something along the lines of 'after it sparked on me, the computer started to shut down (though I won't tell them I used it after the spark for 6 months before it started doing this)

[shovenose]

Re: The beast is dying, heart or brain-which is it

here is a closer pic of the connector. the plastic has been getting so hot and cold over and over its brittle and breaks off to the touch

damn thing just turned off on me. I'm not going to tell them I overclocked like I did. I'll try to say something along the lines of 'after it sparked on me, the computer started to shut down (though I won't tell them I used it after the spark for 6 months before it started doing this)

Probably a good idea to not tell them exactly what happened.