It is time I truly sort out a couple of issues with my pc that I build 2 years ago. I truly don’t know what to do with these.
Issue number 1 which has only happened twice. I will turn my PC off the night before and go to hit the on button the next morning and nothing will happen. It will be like the button doesn’t work, not noise, no attempt to start, just nothing.
However if I turn the power off at the wall outlet, let it sit then turn everything back on it all works just fine.
Issue number 2. Every now and then, completely randomly caused by who knows what. Sometimes it happens scrolling my mouse, sometimes it happens playing a game, or watching a video, or just doing general computing.
It will slow everything down for upto a few seconds, audio, video, mouse movement, everything even the case fans will increase in speed. But then after the few seconds everthing goes back to normal.
The only way to describe it is to take a youtube video and slow it down to 1/4-1/2 speed. Like a drunk computer sounding moment. Then goes back to normal.
Drivers are up to date, I am on windows 11 pro, temps are all fine, my system has never overheated ever, my case fans have never gone full speed due to temp ever. I was curious oneday so ran them up to what a full speed high temp scenario would be and they have never ever been that high during normal day to day operation.
I am at my wits end on this. I wish I could remember at what moment this issue started so that I could remember what I changed.
How old is your power supply (psu)? Is it a brand name? Have you doubled checked that the psu cable are fully seated into the mobo and other devices?
Honestly it sounds like the psu voltage on one or more of the rails is starting to go out of tolerance. You should be able to check in the bios / uefi for the voltages being supplied.
Has anyone had issues with conflicting audio drivers? One of the things I did around the same time as the audio issue started was go to external audio vs monitor audio and also a new keyboard. I have just deleted the gpu audio driver and left the motherboard audio driver just to see if it makes a difference.
I would laugh if those two have been messing around the whole time.
the cant turn on thing means your psu isn’t draining its capacitors.
cause?
could be dirty power from the wall, dirty power from components, bad switch or a bad psu.
the likely outcome will be you replace the psu.
as for the slowdown… keep task manager open, use your pc… when the slowdown happens, whats happening with the cpu/gpu? are they maxing out?..
if so grab sys internals process hacker 2.
run that instead of task manager and then when your cpu/gpu spikes trace the application with high workload.
you may have malware.
or just an unruly app demanding more resources than it should.
as for the audio, they shouldn’t really conflict.
you can just disable them from control panel/sound.
Regarding the power supply. The thing that makes it hard for me to believe it’s a faulty power supply is that say hypothetically that I turn the pc on once a day. So say 700 times. It’s only done the no turning on thing twice out of 700 times.
It’s still got warranty either way. I also have a spare but lower wattage power supply. But still annoying to fathom.
I´m with @anon7678104 on this one and you might start from there to figure out,
what you cold boot problem is causing.
You said that you have a spare psu laying around.
So i would start with that and put the spare one in the system to see,
if that fixes the problem.
if that does not fix the problem we could pretty much exclude the psu.
However it would be nice to know which particular hardware you have in your system.
it could for example also be a bios setting which is causing a cold boot issue with certain psu´s.
As for the the other issue.
I would say start with a clean fresh install of Windows if you did not tried that already.
However yeah like i said it would be handy to know your system specs.
Yeah I’m not doubting you guys. Just not wanting to chuck parts at an intermittent non replicable problem.
The turn on issue for example may not happen again for 6 months.
I’m not against reinstalling windows either but once again that’s a drastic measure for something that may not even be the cause. Especially when I know that it only started happening so long into my use of the computer when I changed something. I just can’t remember what that change was as there were a few thing’s changed at the same time non of them being internal hardware.
I’ll list the specs a little later when I have a bit more time.
its simple enough to test…
go into the kitchen turn on the day to day stuff. (doesnt have to be for long, just load up the ring main circuit that your pc is also attached to)… turn the pc off. turn everything else off.
try and turn the pc on.
it worked?..
next do the same again but this time turn everything off while the pc is on.
now turn the pc of and on again.
if its dirty power from the house it will likely cause your psu to trip its self protect and wont let you turn it on.
you could also invest in a ups to sit between your pc and the ring main.
it will smooth out and stop most dirty power problems and give you a bit of peace of mind.
i would recommend you look before fresh installing. process hacker 2 is good for this.
yes it looks complicated but a couple of minutes on youtube and you will be good to go with it.
so give it a look. it should show you whats causing the slow down.
So my specs are asus x570 ws pro ace (I think that is what it is called) motherboard.
5900x cpu with air cooler by noctua.
64gb ecc ram, nothing fancy just the appropriate ram for my motherboard and cpu. Have been memtested.
m.2ssd for main drive, 2.5 ssd for storage both 1gb samsung
nvidia rtx a4000 16gb
2x 4k screens
external speakers
fractal define s (I think) case with noctua fans.
evga 1000 p5 psu
Not the best but not the worst
Outside of these two intermittent issues it has been the most sound and reliable windows PC I have ever used.
Will be interesting to see how it runs now. I just gave everything a really good clean. To say the front air intake was blocked would be understatement of the century. All clean now.
This is some good observation. I can’t say it’s the cause or not because I honestly don’t know.
For my PC, out of 3000 times on/off, I perhaps ran into fewer than 5 times. It didn’t bother me at all but raised my curiosity of what’s happening under the hood.
Sometimes I suspect it has to do with the EU mandatory “ErP” thing. But I didn’t bother test it with or without. I enabled ErP somewhere in the middle of my PC possession. Perhaps since then I got the “5 times”. I really can’t remember.
While I have not confirmed or denied any issues. I have decided to do things properly and setup the ups I have had sitting around in a box unopened for ages. It is an eaton 5E 2000 with 3 sockets so pc and two monitors should be fine. With having to plus the ups into the wall and being a little far away compared to my power board I have ordered longer cables for the pc and monitors so that everything is direct, no funny business with power boards or extension chords.
Mental note, when having audio issues. Delete completely and reinstall all audio drivers. So far so good but too early to tick off the list of problems.
Well it happened again but far less extreme this time. I am starting to wonder if it is due to my keyboard’s audio interface. That is the last thing that I can think of when I think back to when it started. It is a das keyboard but driverless.
keyboards audio interface?.
doesn it have drivers? if so disable them in sound options.
have you ran a drive test on your storage.
there should be an nvme ssd test in bios if not crystal disk info will tell you if the drive has issues.
have you been playing with pbo settings in bios?..
try using the cpu in eco mode.
(you wont lose much performance in most things and will seriously reduce power draw)