PSU went bad after less than two years...
So, about a month ago, my system just rebooted on its own when I wasn't around...and I thought...that's odd...lol
I didn't have windows set to reboot after a BSOD, so it wasn't a BSOD that caused it to reboot...it just rebooted for whatever reason...
I brushed it aside as a one-off...
But then, a couple of weeks later, while playing demanding video games like Call of Duty and Fortnite, it would suddenly freeze to a relatively black screen with a few remnants of color...needing me to press the power button to shut down as everything else was non-responsive.
It would then go on to do this about every other day....
Then on Thanksgiving, it started to just turn off completely on its own while on the desktop and not playing any games or doing anything demanding...the motherboard LED would still be lit and the power button LED would remain lit, but everything else was off...no fans...no nothing...it just appeared as if it was turned off except for those few LED lights.
I would reboot the machine via pressing the power button...and about 5 minutes into it being back up and running, it would simply shut off abruptly again like someone pulled the plug...with the exception of those two aforementioned LEDs...
So, I hoped it was a bad PSU, bought a new one, threw it in there (not an entirely easy task in a small form factor case) and it's been up and running with no hiccups since Friday evening.
I won't be entirely sure this has fixed the problem until it goes at least a week without crashing again, but seeing how it was shutting itself off within a few minutes of rebooting the last two times I tried before switching out the PSU, I am pretty confident that is what the problem was.
I didn't cheap out on the original PSU either...it was a Seasonic, and most people have good things to say about that brand...it's certainly not considered "cheaping out" if you go with Seasonic.
I wanted a Corsair PSU, but I built this rig during the pandemic (late 2020) and there weren't any Corsair PSUs available that fit what I needed at the time.
I am now running the Corsair PSU I wanted originally....
So a word to anyone out there that builds your own PCs...even if it's been a year or two, a PSU can go bad on you...good thing as far as PCs go, this was a very easy fix (way easier than having to replace the motherboard or CPU, which was the only other thing it could be, as a GPU would not shut down an entire system like I was experiencing).
Last edited by PaceAdvantage; 11-27-2022 at 01:18 PM.
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