PSU on its way out?

AshB1989 · 19 Oct 2020 at 19:37

Hi,

I'm a fairly novice builder, but I think my PSU is knackered and I'm hoping you guys can help.

Recently I've been gaming and my screen suddenly goes off. I can still hear music/gameplay through my headphones but nothing brings my monitor back to life unless I reboot it. This is happening almost instantly now when I turn it on, so need to get it resolved.

Faulty PSU or a different issue?

TIA.

pastymuncher · 19 Oct 2020 at 19:42

Some more information would be helpful. What make and model is the psu and what components is it powering?

AshB1989 · 19 Oct 2020 at 19:47

Apologies.

Corsair CX550M semi modular tax PSU. Powering Ryzen 5 1600, AB250m mobo, ssd and 1070ti mini.

Cheers

I've noticed it flickers off, then the fans go mental in the case. Not sure if it is significant.

bjmnz · 20 Oct 2020 at 07:04

Another possibility is that it could be your graphics card.

pastymuncher · 20 Oct 2020 at 09:52

It would seem to be more of a GPU problem. I don't suppose you have a spare GPU or have a mate that could lend you theirs for testing purposes?

AshB1989 · 20 Oct 2020 at 19:39

Bizarely it appears to have settled and been okay since posting this. It did it around 4/5 times before settling down. Are there any tests I can do for the GPU?

pastymuncher · 21 Oct 2020 at 10:38

You could run some stress tests to check it but nothing else really. Loop something like Heaven or Asus realbench for a couple of hours or if you really want to hammer it try OCCT's torture test but keep a close eye on your temps.

The Corsair CM550M isn't a great psu but the latest version of it is a massive improvement over the old version and now has a 5 year warranty. It should be more than enough to power your pc while still having some decent spare headroom left over.

If it's behaving itself now it could be a good move to update the latest motherboard bios and update all drivers just to rule out any compatibility issues. Ryzen boards have had a great many bios updates since release which have increased stability, compatibility and fairly often performance too.

AshB1989 · 21 Oct 2020 at 18:04

I'll give that a blast then. Are you aware of any free software that highlights drivers that need updating? I don't have a clue what version I have so don't want to upgrade the wrong thing!

Thanks

pastymuncher · 21 Oct 2020 at 19:45

Don't use free software to update drivers and especially bios. A lot of them are dodgy as hell and I would only trust the ones from the motherboard manufacturers website. Even then I wouldn't use them as they can cause no end of problems. If you download CPU-z it will tell you under the motherboard tab the bios version that you are running. If that is older than the latest on your motherboard manufacturers website I would update. If you are running a particularly old bios pay attention to any instructions on the bios download page as you may need to update in a specific order. If there are no instructions then you can just update to the latest version. Always download the bios to a USB stick and flash the bios using the tool in the actual bios menu (most motherboard manufacturers have one). Under no circumstances should you flash the bios in windows. You can download the latest drivers from your motherboard manufacturers website as well. The latest Nvidia driver is the Nvidia GeForce 456.98 hotfix released today. We have a massive thread on Nvidia drivers here.

AshB1989 · 21 Oct 2020 at 20:37

Thank you very much, I'll give that a blast.

Quartz · 21 Oct 2020 at 20:54

AshB1989 said:
Faulty PSU or a different issue?

Highly unlikely to be the PSU. It's most likely to be the video cable or the monitor.

AshB1989 · 24 Oct 2020 at 11:39

Just an update. I went on my decks last night, which is powered by USB, and I noticed they weren't getting enough power. I moved the USB to a different slot and it began to work. Does this point towards a dodgy PSU again? Or potentially mobo?

pastymuncher · 24 Oct 2020 at 14:53

If it was dodgy in one port but fine in another that would point to a mobo problem.

AshB1989 · 24 Oct 2020 at 19:38

Oh dear. Would that coincide with the previously mentioned issues? I suppose the DP issue would be GPU, not mobo?

pastymuncher · 25 Oct 2020 at 13:29

It very well could be all down to the motherboard.

AshB1989 · 30 Oct 2020 at 21:34

So it just went off and I rebooted. This is what I saw -

Once I rebooted it was okay again.

I've just looked in Windows Event Viewer and seen the following message:
The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) did not load:
dam

It appears to be fine when I'm just browsing/YT, but struggles when gaming.