My PC has developed an intermittent yet annoying habit of restarting itself randomly and without warning.

I’ve opened it up, re-seated everything, re-gunked the CPU, brushed out heatsinks and hoovered up… still not fixed.

So, I’ve decided it must be the PSU. Is there anything I need to know when ordering a new one? The one I’ve got is 250w so I thought I’d just buy the most powerful I can find. Is this the way to go?

Or, am I barking up the wrong tree with thinking my PSU’s knackered?

Cheers!

Does it still happen when you use another OS? Have you checked your logs? (Windows). Years ago I had it happen to me on Win7 because the OS couldn’t control power correctly so had to tweak the power settings in the BIOS.

Wattage is not so important as long as you have enough, but quality is much more important than wattage when trying to hit a budget.

As in,

Go for the higher quality PSU at X cost
Rather than the highest wattage PSU at X cost

I’ve no idea if your fault is caused by a PSU, though. Usually when a PSU goes there is a bang and a smell of melting capacitors.

When you say restart – is it a windows restart – as in, you get the “restarting your computer…” screen?

Or does it just turn off suddenly then fire back up?

It’s a possibility if your case is quite old and had a few generations of processor / mb upgrades… might not be coping with the load.

If you have a flash graphics card, might be worth pulling that and running on integrated, see if the reduced load helps.

Or does it just turn off suddenly then fire back up?

This.

Does it still happen when you use another OS? Have you checked your logs? (Windows). Years ago I had it happen to me on Win7 because the OS couldn’t control power correctly so had to tweak the power settings in the BIOS.

Interesting, never thought about that. I’m using W7 too…

If you have a flash graphics card, might be worth pulling that and running on integrated, see if the reduced load helps.

Good idea.

So how do I ‘check my logs’ then? 🙂

This.

If that’s the case, then that sounds like a PSU issue.

You said your PSU is 250w? That is TINY FWIW – so I don’t know what GPU you have but it is possible the graphics is pulling too much, spiking and tripping it over.

Buy one of these:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/powersupplies/cp-9020047-uk.html

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/powersupplies/cp-9020058-uk.html

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/powersupplies/cp-9020046-uk.html

I’m sure they could be cheaper on Amazon etc, shop around. Corsair are a great brand. Other known brands are good also but avoid “own” brands as they’re just cheap Chinese landfill stuff.

The PSU is one of the most dangerous components to have blow up in terms of collateral – it could easily fry your MoBo/CPU/GPU/Anything plugged in. So it’s really worth buying a reputable brand.

Around the 400-500W is where you want to be, most likely.

All good advice. Cheers everyone.

plython; those psu’s you linked to all have a fan in the top. I have a horizontal case so there’d be sheet metal covering it. Am I missing something?

You can mount the PSU’s either way up (fan facing down or up) but as we are here it’s worth checking that your case is a standard ATX form factor. I posted those PSUs assuming it would be.

if you can link to your case or the PC build I’ll take a peek 🙂

Thanks.

Similar to this…

Edit: Sorry, that’s probably not very helpful. I’ll climb under the desk and look on the back of mine 🙂

I have been running a SilverStone modular power supply for almost 4 years, I think it is about 700-750 watts no problems at all.

Oh and my i7 950 is overclocked by about 30% and my 2 GPUs by 20%

EDIT

The Corsair’s above are very good

Oooohhh reeet that’s a bit of a special case (pun not intended but still never-the-less proud of) as they’re small form factor things…

it could be non-standard size with these own branded cases like those… so you might have luck going into a shop and seeing if they can source one but it might be bite the bullet time and either get a bit DIY and build a new PC from scratch or a new PC…

I had repeated restarts on Win 7. Often 4 or 5 in a row on start and then it ran fine. I updated all the drivers, ran every diagnostic I could think of and was about to take it to the repairer when following a further set of updates it stopped happening. That was 3 months ago and it is still going fine without recurrence of the problem. My guess is software.

New case time unless everything inside is standard and you can get another original (non) standard supply.

If it’s only just started happening then odds on it’s the PSU that’s failing or being overloaded with a high draw device.

Could be PSU, could be motherboard. Could be thermal, if you’ve “re-gunked” the CPU and used half a pint of the stuff.

If I were you, I’d try and borrow a PSU from somewhere to test first. Failing that, you could try disconnecting non-essential components like the optical drive, see if still does it with a reduced load.

I had a similar problem recently, I went through the usual processes; it turned out to be the motherboard that had expired. If it’s really that Fujitsu in the picture it all looks a bit non-standard inside so any parts-swapping may be a bit of a problem.

Thought I’d update this.

The problem seems to have disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived. Could it be related to heat? I notice it hasn’t done it since Saturday, now the weather here changed on Sunday, it had been really hot and humid but got a lot cooler on Sunday…

I bet it starts again as soon as I post this 😉