Bad Power Supply Issue Story Diagnosing Troubleshooting

These are fairly classic symptoms but they may not present obviously enough early on.

I had a power supply issue with my old Corsair CX430 (430 Watt).

The build had two old 95W Xeon CPUs, 2 USB devices and a PCI-E powered Nvidia Quadro or at one point a GT710.  This shouldn't have overwhelmed the PS but this power supply is known to be weak by many users.

Symptom 1. Graphics Issues

This would only present it self after coming back with the screensaver, when hitting the keyboard or mouse to stop the screensaver and get the login screen, it would just freeze for a number of seconds.  I initially chalked it up to bad cooling or an old Nvidia driver.

Symptom 2. Mouse Issues

Sometimes the mouse would just freeze or not track properly, clearly in hindsight it was a power supply issue but the mouse itself also did test bad, so this was not completely obvious.

Symptom 3. USB Issues

I didn't have this particular issue but a lot of times I've seen issues with power supplies, you may notice a USB SSD does not work right or drops out.  This is tricky to diagnose as it is often the USB SSD enclosure/cable itself, OR it is sometimes the internal cabling or resistance from motherboard to the front of the PC.

Symptom 4. Resetting randomly.

This one is fairly obvious but may slowly creep up.  You may assume if you aren't at the PC all the time that it may be due to an update or even a bad motherboard or a watchdog service acting up.

Conclusion

If you ever have any issues like this, if practical, swap out for a known good power supply and see if any of these types of symptoms goes away.

In my example, I swapped in a known good 750W EVGA and all has been fine since (no resets, no screensaver freezing, no USB issues etc...)


Tags:

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