Hello everyone.
A friend of mine is having issues with his computer again. After installing Overwatch and the newest Radeon driver, the entire computer crashes either instantly after pressing "Quick play" or about 15 minutes into the game.
As I was thinking it might be the power supply (Corsair RM850), I replaced it with mine (EVGA SuperNova 750G1). I was right. The system never crashed after that. The Corsair PSU gets very warm, but the fan never kicks in. In fact, the fan has NEVER EVER kicked in since day one. I know this is supposed to be normal for RM PSU's with the fan only turning on at about 40-50% load (still very weird, after a quick calculation I'm pretty sure the system pulls around 600 watts of power under load, which should be well above that threshold).
So I have three theories:
Moderate load -> not high enough for fan -> no fan -> PSU too hot -> too much ripple -> shutdown?
Too high load for 850 watts (doubt it, since it works flawlessly with a 750 watt one)?
Just a bad PSU that can't handle the system?
I was thinking about getting the Corsair Link bridge adaptor thingy for manually controlling the fan in the Corsair PSU, but that seems strangely hard to get these days and waaaaay overpriced here in Switzerland (40 dollars for some tiny cables, what.) Besides, I doubt it would fix the problem.
Or maybe try overclocking the system until it pulls enough power from the PSU for the fan to kick in? lol
What do you guys think? What else should I check? Keep in mind I don't have a multimeter or an oscilloscope at home to check for voltages or ripple and taking the entire system to work would be way too much effort.
Oh yeah, the specs are:
i7-5820K, not overclocked
R9 290X (XFX black edition), not overclocked
MSI X99A SLI plus
4x8GB DDR4-2400 HyperX Predator
Thanks to everyone in advance.
Did it crash in any other games?
And is it new?
Tried it with Far Cry 3 and some other slightly older games, my buddy isn't really a hard gamer and doesn't have a lot of demanding titles.
Strangely, Overwatch seems to push the computer harder than any game on the computer before.
As far as I know those Corsair PSUs have a 5 year warranty. And I think the RM line doesn't even exist that long. So it shouldn't be a problem to get a replacement.
Is it a BSOD type crash or some random black screen that leads to no signal beeing passed to the screen?
I ask this as a friend runs the same system on a 630W PSU.
Sometimes the game freezes for a second, then it crashes and takes my machine with it into a BSOD. The support said that it might be an overlay from Discord (witch I tested was not the case) or (hold on tight) overclocked components (my system is not overclocked) "Our games do not support overclocking" which is the worst answer I ever got in 8 years from the Blizzard support.
My machine is stable as hell. 24h Furmark/Prime95 passed without any hickups. I changed PSUs as I thought the same. Just to be able to watch my machine crash again for no good reason.
I would do two things:
1) Open a support Ticket to Blizzard.
2) Start the RMA process to claim your 5 year warranty on the Corsair PSU.
Overclocks are not always as stable as you think. There are cases where everything might seem fine, but something that you aren't testing will then start to cause instability. The only real test that an overclock is working properly for a given task is to test the overclock while doing that task. Don't test with just Furmark or Prime95, test with the games you want to play with that overclock and then declare it stable.
When systems start to just shut off unexpectedly without bluescreening one thing I always check are the female pins in the molex connectors. With a modular PSU you now have double the female pins since you have a connector on each end of each cable, which means you are about twice as likely to find them too loose to carry the full load of your system. They can become loose when doing work in the case or just loosen over time. They can still make enough contact to let the system run, but pull too much current through them and the system becomes unstable and unpredictable.
With the Corsair PSU in, wiggle the cables and individual wires around a little bit (up, down, left and right) and see if you can find a dead spot where the system just shuts off. If wiggling doesn't shut off with the PC at idle, then try again with some load on the system. If it does happen to shut off, you can use a small screw driver or even a toothpick and start bending the female pins inside the molex connectors into a more closed position. Think of the female pins as two square or semi-circle metal hands that need to be very close together. You want them tight so they will make good contact with the male pins on the motherboard and GPU (and in the case of modular supplies, the pins on the PSU).
And yes, I know I there are some really good jokes in there.
I had a PSU do the same thing, the fan never came on.
I was returning the whole build cause the MB was bad and as I was putting it in the box the little black plastic tie (like you find on a loaf of bread) fell out of the fan.