How do you confirm/deny a failing power supply

I have several programs that can monitor component temps, and PSU voltage, etc. Thing is, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Is there a program that can monitor the PSU and post a notification if something fuckey happens? Or am I supposed to sit there and watch it?

My computer is freezing (requires a hard restart) and I managed to rule everything out except for the following items:
power supply
motherboard
wireless card
some software/driver

I don't know how to test those last 4.

Other urls found in this thread:

support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/331796/perform-a-clean-startup-to-determine-whether-background-programs-are-i
youtube.com/watch?v=ZApBv6yEu6w
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

shove your dick in it.
if it kills you it works

I doubt there's enough current running through it to kill you.

step 1:
grab PSU that you only use for testing
step 2:
install it

i still use the chink PSU that came with my $40 case from 2004, for testing.

Buy a test card. Jewegg has 'em.

Bump

and how did you manage to rule out memory/HDD/CPU failure?

I keep seeing that as advice. Just grab another power supply. Who the fuck actually has a second power supply on hand? Ii could always buy another one, but I'd rather not spend the money on something if I won't end up needing it.

I hear that those don't always give conclusive results. Though, it seems there aren't many options.

With pic related.

how do you only have one working computer in your house?

Memetest

>My computer is freezing (requires a hard restart)
how did you manage to test your HDD/RAM/CPU long enough without failing

My desktop, 3 laptops. Seems normal to me.

Sometimes my PC would freeze mid test, I'd have to restart and try again. That happened with the first 2 or 3 HDD runs. But that's my issue. The freezing is literally random, as far as I can tell. I've run stress tests, everything I could find. Nothing in particular triggers the freezing. I could be in a game, watching Youtube, browsing the web, running a virus scan, literally just sitting on the desktop. It's random. I haven't had a crash today, but I had 7 yesterday. It will do that. Go away for 3 days, come back and crash 5 minutes after start up multiple time in a row, or 20 minutes. I literally can't pin it.

The only certain this is this: I've never crashed in safe mode. I've frozen mid sign in 2 or 3 times, but it almost always happens after sign in.

That's the fucking confusing this about this. Everything I've tested seems fine. I ran pic related about 30 minutes ago. I would assume that means I have no corrupted drivers as well.

If that is the case, then it would be either motherboard, or PSU, right? But like you said, how would the PSU be stable enough to never crash in safe mode or stable enough to run stress tests on every component in the PC?

i had a corrupt CPU.
the intel iGPU was broken.
i found out by installing a video card and the problem went away.
wasn't the motherboard, it was replaced a year later.

hardware/driver failure IMO.

I'm not sure I follow. You had a PC with integrated graphics and the problem fixed itself when you got a dedicated gpu?

But how are you supposed to find that out? That's the frustrating part.

work computer being thrown out.
i grabbed it.
i installed a graphics card and it worked great for a year.
realized i don't ever use the graphics card so i took it out.
immediately started getting random BSoDs.
tested everything.
everything was fine.
reinstalled graphics card.
problem went away.

i just recently replaced my PSU because i would shutdown the computer and the computer would immediately restart.
weirdest PSU failure.

support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/331796/perform-a-clean-startup-to-determine-whether-background-programs-are-i

youtube.com/watch?v=ZApBv6yEu6w

In my experience with PSU's and power in general. Its either working or its not. If you knew how to fix it you would not be posting this thread.

Get a PSU tester.
Alternatively, RMA, HX850 has 7 year warranty...

So you're saying that it's unlikely that my PSU is the problem?

I'll probably end up getting a PSU tester since they're cheap and at least it's something. That's not my actual PSU. I forget which one I have. I'd have to take a look.

Get that shit out of your computer first of all. Literally had a PSU failure last month and it nuked my 4770K and board. There's things you can fuck around with, and then there's running bad power through your shit. Don't do that.

Why would I take action if I don't even know what the problem is? I'm not even there yet.

I can give that Clean Boot thing a try. But what am I supposed to do with it? I'm disabling all non Microsoft programs and then what? Start opening everything one by one?

pretty much.
testing for driver/hardware failure.

This is wrong. If a power supply is in the early stages of failure the voltage will fluctuate just outside of fail-safe ranges when under heavy stress.

It's also really important to make sure that everything is plugged into the motherboard correctly. You'd be surprised how similar a PSU failure and improper connection look. Even software that monitors power levels will show that slight voltage error.

Okay. I'm kinda following. So what exactly is supposed to happen? When I activate the faulty software, is it supposed to cause the freeze to occur?

Someone else in here said it could be an OS problem. How do you rule that out?

The PSU that came with my case in december 2004 died in january 2005

Whoops. This was meant for But if the stress tests are of any indication, this problem isn't caused by stress loads. I have software that will monitor voltage levels, but I don't know what I'm looking at, or what numbers are good or bad.

I have a similar problem like OP, but mine restarts randomly. Checked event viewer and it says that the system restarted abruptly with kernel power error 41, that's PSU failing right?

shit if i know.
i've never did this method before.
just googled "computer works fine in safemode but not in normal mode"

you said that it doesn't freeze/crash in safemode.

clean boot is basically safemode.
once you do a clean boot.
do some shit.
if it doesn't freeze.
start re-adding programs/drivers one by one until something freezes
or get a PSU from a friend

My event viewer says the same thing.
But the only description of Event ID 41 is "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

It doesn't indicate anything. Just simply states that the PC didn't shutdown correctly.

This isn't as concise as I'd hope, but at least that will eventually knock out a driver/software issue, if that is the cause. I can see it working. To bad there isn't an easier way, seemingly.