Lightly Used 8-9 year old Seasonic PSU still good?

[TheWai]

TL;DR: I have an 8-9 year old PSU (don't remember exactly) made by Seasonic that was barely used from 2014-2020. Is it safe to use in my next build?

 

 

Hello!

 

Hope everyone is staying safe during these unprecedented times. I have an 8-9 year old power supply (for some reason I'm struggling to remember exactly when I bought it, but it was between 2011-2012). It's an XFX 750w black edition 80+ Silver (XPS 750-BES) -- the older version with the green fan, and based on what I've read, it's actually made by Seasonic.

 

What the PSU has gone through:

I've used this power supply almost everyday from when I bought it until the end of 2013. From 2014- 2018/19, I went away to university and barely ever touched the computer that this psu was installed in. I would use it probably a few weeks each year when I came home during breaks, but it's not impossible that the computer went over a year without turning on even once. When I was using the power supply heavily, I would clean out the dust once or twice every month, however, during the years that it was barely used, it stayed installed in my computer case facing downward with a dust filter, so not much dust settled into the PSU. A month ago, I gave the system a long awaited cleaning and surprisingly, there was not much dust, only a few cobwebs.. LOL. In terms of environmental conditions, I live in Ontario, Canada, so we get a mix of humid and dry days along with temperature changes throughout the year. During this whole time, the PSU was powering an i5-750 at stock clocks and a GTX 570, which is well within the limits of a 750w PSU.

 

Next Steps:

Now, I'm slowly getting back into gaming and am upgrading my PC, but I was wondering if it is safe to continue using this power supply in my next build. Within the past month I've turned on the same system (yes, the same one from almost a decade ago) to do some light gaming and everything seems to be working fine. I've even run some benchmarks like Unigine Heaven 4.0 and there were no hiccups in terms of power delivery that I could tell. I've recently upgraded to a 2nd hand GTX 1060 6GB which consumes even less wattage than the GTX 570, so life in the coming year should be easier on this PSU.

 

Going forward, my friend is giving me his old i5-6500, and I've purchased a Z170 motherboard to potentially try some baseclock overclocking since it's not an unlocked processor. As you can tell, I'm using a lot of 2nd hand parts in my upgrade, so I'm not trying to spend too much on my computer which is why I'm considering to continue using this power supply. I do plan on upgrading the GPU maybe in 1-2 years, likely to another mid-range card like a GTX 1660 Super or equivalent tier, or potentially getting a RTX XX70 card (i.e similar tier as my GTX 570 was back in its hay day).

 

So in summary, I want to know:

1) If time itself will wear out my PSU; meaning that even though I only regularly used it for about 3 years, that  the components inside are still quite worn out similar to if I used it regularly for the whole 8-9 years.

2) Does the max output/ wattage of the PSU decrease over time? If I were to upgrade again, should I view my PSU as no longer a 750w but maybe something around 600w and build around those limits?

3) Is it safe to continue using this 8-9 year old XFX/ Seasonic manufactured PSU to power my next build containing an i5-6500 and GTX 1060? Will I also have headroom to do baseclock overclocking and potentially a future graphics card upgrade?

 

Apologies for the long post, just wanted to give everyone as much detail as possible on the condition of the PSU and what I want to do with it. Thanks in advance!

 

 

[mahyar]

1)depends highly on components used in psu (mostly capacitors)

2)afaik no

3)it depends

[SupaKomputa]

a good psu can last 10+ years, that's why high end psu models give this kind of warranty.

i'm no electric expert, all i know is the thing that would wear out is the capacitors. check them make sure there's no bulging.

6500 + 1060 not really power demanding, i think it should run them.

[.Apex.]

43 minutes ago, TheWai said:

1) If time itself will wear out my PSU; meaning that even though I only regularly used it for about 3 years, that  the components inside are still quite worn out similar to if I used it regularly for the whole 8-9 years.

Unfortunately capacitors do have a shelf life and they will degrade over time even if they are not used, though it's very difficult to know how much they have degraded or if by any considerable amount even but it's probably best not to think about it as a 3 year old PSU.

 

43 minutes ago, TheWai said:

2) Does the max output/ wattage of the PSU decrease over time? If I were to upgrade again, should I view my PSU as no longer a 750w but maybe something around 600w and build around those limits?

If the capacitors have degraded significantly then yes you would start noticing severe voltage drops well before you reach the 750W output rating, but again it's difficult to know, I suggest you put a load on the GPU+CPU and check your 12V voltages that are reported by the motherboard, HWiNFO can give you those numbers but make sure you run it in "sensors-only" mode when you launch it.

 

The 12V reading shouldn't drop below 11.9V under load if the PSU is in good condition, technically it should stay at 12V exactly since at the time that was a decent PSU.

43 minutes ago, TheWai said:

3) Is it safe to continue using this 8-9 year old XFX/ Seasonic manufactured PSU to power my next build containing an i5-6500 and GTX 1060? Will I also have headroom to do baseclock overclocking and potentially a future graphics card upgrade?

Those components don't consume much power so if the PSU is still working good after you have checked your voltages then it should handle an overclock, but whether if it's safe that's hard to know, you can't really predict when the PSU will go bad prematurely but most of the time it would show signs before it dies by experiencing random shutdowns or severe voltage drops.

[mariushm]

I'd be comfortable using it. 

 

If you want, open the psu and take some pictures of the internals and I'll give you a better opinion. 

 

Seasonic is in general a good OEM manufacturer and they use electrolytic capacitors from good brands, which don't degrade as much over time and use. It should still be fine, especially if lightly used.

The new system is also relatively light, the gtx 1060 is a 125w video card, the cpu is under 100w, so you're not even loading the psu to a third of its maximum output.

 

With near 10 year old power supplies, I'd be double checking the fan and potentially replacing it with a good quality one... a fan dying while you're gaming could overheat the psu and cause it to fail.

 

 

[Ralf]

Yes because it's made by God SeaSonic God.

[ZeroStressLevel]

1 hour ago, Ralf said:

Yes because it's made by God SeaSonic God.

Huh? Seasonic have made trash what do you mean lmao. Going by brand is dumb they're not perfect lol. Literally every brand has at some point sold subpar/bad PSUs.

[TheWai]

18 hours ago, Syn. said:

Unfortunately capacitors do have a shelf life and they will degrade over time even if they are not used, though it's very difficult to know how much they have degraded or if by any considerable amount even but it's probably best not to think about it as a 3 year old PSU.

 

If the capacitors have degraded significantly then yes you would start noticing severe voltage drops well before you reach the 750W output rating, but again it's difficult to know, I suggest you put a load on the GPU+CPU and check your 12V voltages that are reported by the motherboard, HWiNFO can give you those numbers but make sure you run it in "sensors-only" mode when you launch it.

 

The 12V reading shouldn't drop below 11.9V under load if the PSU is in good condition, technically it should stay at 12V exactly since at the time that was a decent PSU.

Those components don't consume much power so if the PSU is still working good after you have checked your voltages then it should handle an overclock, but whether if it's safe that's hard to know, you can't really predict when the PSU will go bad prematurely but most of the time it would show signs before it dies by experiencing random shutdowns or severe voltage drops.

So I downloaded HWiNFO and ran Unigine Heaven 4.0. See attached the results of the motherboard voltages (excuse the dell motherboard, couldn't afford anything better as a highschooler so had to reuse parts from a prebuilt haha). Columns are Current, Minimum, Maximum and Average. I think the numbers are okay? But I'm by no means an expert in reading voltages so I'm not sure if the slight fluctuation is fine. 

 

Since it's a decent power supply, do you think when its time comes, I'll just get the random shut offs and nothing worse? I just don't want it to blow up the other components.

[TheWai]

18 hours ago, mariushm said:

I'd be comfortable using it. 

 

If you want, open the psu and take some pictures of the internals and I'll give you a better opinion. 

 

Seasonic is in general a good OEM manufacturer and they use electrolytic capacitors from good brands, which don't degrade as much over time and use. It should still be fine, especially if lightly used.

The new system is also relatively light, the gtx 1060 is a 125w video card, the cpu is under 100w, so you're not even loading the psu to a third of its maximum output.

 

With near 10 year old power supplies, I'd be double checking the fan and potentially replacing it with a good quality one... a fan dying while you're gaming could overheat the psu and cause it to fail.

 

 

Yeah it seems like the overall consensus is that I should be able to continue using it. Would love to open it and send a picture, but it's not a fully modular power supply and it's currently hooked up to my PC. I'll send one over when I take it out.

 

Also, I've never opened a PSU before. I know I'm not tinkering with any of the components but I've heard there are risks to doing so. Anything I should do/ prepare before opening it?

 

I've checked the fan from the outside to make sure it's still spinning so I think it should be okay? Unless there's a more thorough check that I can do.

[vsral]

On 8/11/2020 at 10:27 AM, Syn. said:

Unfortunately capacitors do have a shelf life and they will degrade over time even if they are not used, though it's very difficult to know how much they have degraded or if by any considerable amount even but it's probably best not to think about it as a 3 year old PSU.

 

If the capacitors have degraded significantly then yes you would start noticing severe voltage drops well before you reach the 750W output rating, but again it's difficult to know, I suggest you put a load on the GPU+CPU and check your 12V voltages that are reported by the motherboard, HWiNFO can give you those numbers but make sure you run it in "sensors-only" mode when you launch it.

 

The 12V reading shouldn't drop below 11.9V under load if the PSU is in good condition, technically it should stay at 12V exactly since at the time that was a decent PSU.

Those components don't consume much power so if the PSU is still working good after you have checked your voltages then it should handle an overclock, but whether if it's safe that's hard to know, you can't really predict when the PSU will go bad prematurely but most of the time it would show signs before it dies by experiencing random

shutdowns or severe voltage drops.

 

Sorry for the semi-hijack of this topic, but I'm in a very similar situation.

Still have my x58 system folding/BOINCing, but PSU is over 9 years old I think (Seasonic X 760).

 

Checked my voltages under load (+/- 320 watts on the wall), and my voltages (12 / 3.3) are quite different from TheWai's

I'm no PSU connaisseur, but I would like some peace of mind now I read this topic.

 

 

[mariushm]

6 hours ago, TheWai said:

Also, I've never opened a PSU before. I know I'm not tinkering with any of the components but I've heard there are risks to doing so. Anything I should do/ prepare before opening it?

 

I've checked the fan from the outside to make sure it's still spinning so I think it should be okay? Unless there's a more thorough check that I can do.

 

Power supplies can hold a bit of energy even after they're disconnected from the mains (power cable disconnected, not just on/off switch flipped) 

The power supplies should have components that discharge that energy (convert it to heat) within 10-30 seconds from the moment you unplugged the cable, making the power supply safe even for a 1 year old child. However, there's no 100% guarantee that protection mechanism exists, and if it exists, that it's operating as it should (could be for example the leads of the component that does the discharging have corroded and broken so now the component doesn't do the discharging anymore)

 

Basically, it's only risky if you touch something conductive (metal heatsinks and metal bits of components inside the power supply) or the leads of components on the back of the circuit board, you can get an electric shock ... the energy goes from that metal bits through you down to earth. 

If you don't touch metal bits or if you wear some shoes with rubber or a material that doesn't conduct electricity or if you wear gloves , then you don't get zapped. 

 

So it's fairly safe to just unscrew the cover and lift it up to take some pictures ... because you're not shoving your fingers inside and touching those components, you're not getting close to exposed metal or anything conductive that could get electricity to you.

The fan can be touched, cleaned, removed, replaced, because it works with low voltage, 12v, just like any regular computer fan. 

52 minutes ago, vsral said:

Checked my voltages under load (+/- 320 watts on the wall), and my voltages (12 / 3.3) are quite different from TheWai's

I'm no PSU connaisseur, but I would like some peace of mind now I read this topic.

The 3.3v is a bit on the low side, but within acceptable range (it's can be 3.3v +/- 5% , so 3.135 .. 3.465v )  but I suspect your motherboard is not calibrated well and measures all voltage a bit lower than reality. 

It would be best to just go and buy a digital multimeter and verify the voltages while the computer runs using the multimeter. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, even a 5-10 euro multimeter will be precise enough to give a good answer, up to 2 decimals.

The 5v and 12v can be measured on the molex (old hard drive) connectors... the black (ground/negative) goes in one of two pins in the center, and the other lead goes on the pins on the edges of connector ... one will be 5v and the other will be 12v.  3.3v can be measured on the 24 pin connector. it's one of the pins in the corner of the connector.  You can leave the black probe in the molex connector (on the center - ground - pins) and simply put the other probe to make contact with the metal of the pins in the 24 pin connector.

You can measure while computer runs, as long as you don't touch two pins/contacts with a  probe at the same time, nothing bad will happen. 

 

In addition to that, 3.3v is used by very few things in the computer and it's possible it's lower than normal because very few things in your computer use it - the power supply needs to measure some minimum amount of energy going out of it and then it can use the feedback to adjust the voltage up and down to get it closer to 3.3v 

 

Your computer may consume a lot of power, but your processor and your video card are 99% powered from the 12v output of your power supply and that's what matters. 

11.97v reported by HWInfo is perfectly fine value.

 

Didn't preview the video , but it should be fine : 

 

 

[.Apex.]

17 hours ago, TheWai said:

So I downloaded HWiNFO and ran Unigine Heaven 4.0. See attached the results of the motherboard voltages (excuse the dell motherboard, couldn't afford anything better as a highschooler so had to reuse parts from a prebuilt haha). Columns are Current, Minimum, Maximum and Average. I think the numbers are okay? But I'm by no means an expert in reading voltages so I'm not sure if the slight fluctuation is fine. 

which GPU do you have in there? considering that a GPU should at least pull 100W then the results are perfect for that kind of load

 

17 hours ago, TheWai said:

Since it's a decent power supply, do you think when its time comes, I'll just get the random shut offs and nothing worse? I just don't want it to blow up the other components.

I can't tell you what will fail when the the time comes, but the first thing to go would be the capacitors and most of the time they would degrade to the point that it won't hold the specified charge any more and that results in shutdowns, but there are times it would be catastrophic if the capacitors happen to blow up but that is more likely to happen with cheap PSUs

 

17 hours ago, TheWai said:

Also, I've never opened a PSU before. I know I'm not tinkering with any of the components but I've heard there are risks to doing so. Anything I should do/ prepare before opening it?

I do not suggest that you open it, it's dangerous if you accidentally touch one of the capacitor lines that happen to be charged and you won't learn much either way because if the capacitors are leaking you would already be noticing it, your PSU seems fine

 

11 hours ago, vsral said:

Checked my voltages under load (+/- 320 watts on the wall), and my voltages (12 / 3.3) are quite different from TheWai's

I'm no PSU connaisseur, but I would like some peace of mind now I read this topic.

your 12V and 5V lines are good but the 3.3V is a bit low but it shouldn't be an issue since it isn't being used for power hungry components

[TheWai]

19 hours ago, mariushm said:

 

Power supplies can hold a bit of energy even after they're disconnected from the mains (power cable disconnected, not just on/off switch flipped) 

The power supplies should have components that discharge that energy (convert it to heat) within 10-30 seconds from the moment you unplugged the cable, making the power supply safe even for a 1 year old child. However, there's no 100% guarantee that protection mechanism exists, and if it exists, that it's operating as it should (could be for example the leads of the component that does the discharging have corroded and broken so now the component doesn't do the discharging anymore)

 

Basically, it's only risky if you touch something conductive (metal heatsinks and metal bits of components inside the power supply) or the leads of components on the back of the circuit board, you can get an electric shock ... the energy goes from that metal bits through you down to earth. 

If you don't touch metal bits or if you wear some shoes with rubber or a material that doesn't conduct electricity or if you wear gloves , then you don't get zapped. 

 

So it's fairly safe to just unscrew the cover and lift it up to take some pictures ... because you're not shoving your fingers inside and touching those components, you're not getting close to exposed metal or anything conductive that could get electricity to you.

The fan can be touched, cleaned, removed, replaced, because it works with low voltage, 12v, just like any regular computer fan. 

 

 
So I just opened up the psu... There were more screws holding down the fan than I expected So I didn’t remove it. However, I didn’t even need to remove it to see something that looked alarming to me. In the pictures below, the capacitors in the side seems to be surrounded by this white gum material and is tilted. Does this mean it leaked? How is it still running with stable voltages LOL. Now I’m scared to even turn it on.

 

 

[TheWai]

8 hours ago, Syn. said:

which GPU do you have in there? considering that a GPU should at least pull 100W then the results are perfect for that kind of load

 

That was with the GTX 1060 6gb. So not super power hungry, I think it’s over 100w at load? I did 2 runs of unigine heaven before screenshotting those results.

[quan289]

27 minutes ago, TheWai said:

the capacitors in the side seems to be surrounded by this white gum material and is tilted. Does this mean it leaked?

No, that white goo is used to hold the capacitor in place and not break off due vibration and such.

[mariushm]

2 hours ago, TheWai said:

So I just opened up the psu... There were more screws holding down the fan than I expected So I didn’t remove it. However, I didn’t even need to remove it to see something that looked alarming to me. In the pictures below, the capacitors in the side seems to be surrounded by this white gum material and is tilted. Does this mean it leaked? How is it still running with stable voltages LOL. Now I’m scared to even turn it on.

That actually looks really good, nothing to worry about. 

 

That white stuff is a rubber like material the manufacturer (Seasonic) pours around big components and wires and the material acts like a vibration dampener and also holds those components and wires in place, preventing them from coming out of the holes in the circuit board. 

The big components and the wires are soldered to the circuit board using a process called reflow - the circuit board is placed in a frame which then travels over some smaller rollers into a machine a machine which then pushes up hot liquid solder onto the bottom of the circuit board, like a water fountain. The liquid solder sticks to the leads and the wire ends and solders them to the circuit board. 

That liquid jet of solder can push up quite a bit, so in the process the thin lightweight wires that are just sitting there inserted into holes in the circuit board could be lifted up, and then the wire would not end up soldered properly, so by adding a bit of that material, the wire is glued in place and guaranteed to be soldered properly on the bottom of the board.

The capacitors are too heavy to be pushed up, but as they're so tall, the vibrations from those small rollers as the circuit board goes into the machine can cause the capacitors to shake from side to side and one or both short leads could get out of the circuit board holes. So by adding a bit of that material, they lock the big capacitors in place.

This white glue can then remain to continue to give the power supply protections against vibrations, against mechanical shocks (like for example a box full of power supplies being thrown from a truck down onto the pavement when they reach a store)

 

The capacitor that's not sitting vertical is used to smooth the voltage on the -12v output, which is only used for serial communication. It could probably even be missing, and you wouldn't notice it, because you probably never used the serial ports on your motherboard (if the motherboard even still has these on the IO shield and not just as a header)

So it's really nothing to worry about. 

 

The capacitors are KZE series from United Chemi Con, which is a very good Japanese manufacturer of capacitors (those the capacitors are probably made in Taiwan or China factory of theirs) and KZE series is very good, reliable, with very good properties (good temperature rating, endurance etc)

They're looking very good, you can tell that the top vents (the Y engraved in the tops) are looking good, they're not swollen, so visually the power supply is in great shape, from the pictures I see.

 

The fan color bothers me, but if it spins well and doesn't vibrate or cause issues, it's probably fine. I don't think the fan has a connector, so if you want to replace it you probably have to cut the leads and attach the leads from the new fan to those wires (either by soldering or by twisting the wires and isolating them with some electrical tape... soldering would be ideal, would make it look professional)

 

 

[Turbof1]

That looks very clean; I'd keep using that PSU. Just be sure to put nothing too taxing in your system. Maybe blow out the little bit of dust too.

 

But like others said: no bulged capacitors, no corrosion on the PCB, nothing that even looks out of the ordinary. At the end of the day, it is an electric device. It can always fail, but in reality this PSU should be safe to use for some more years.

 

Maybe try to run the PSU outside the PC case to check if the fan spins normally and decently. I can't possibly imagine that being a problem, but if it gives you further assurance, I'd do that as well.

 

If you are going to overclock, get a power meter plug to check on wattage. Make sure you aren't pushing close to the rated max wattage of the psu.

[vsral]

That's a whole lot of quality info here in this topic. Thansk guys. Starting to really like this forum.

[SolarNova]

Still using a Seasonic Platinum 1KW from ~2012.

 

Quality PSU's tend to last.

[TheWai]

18 hours ago, Syn. said:

which GPU do you have in there? considering that a GPU should at least pull 100W then the results are perfect for that kind of load

 

I can't tell you what will fail when the the time comes, but the first thing to go would be the capacitors and most of the time they would degrade to the point that it won't hold the specified charge any more and that results in shutdowns, but there are times it would be catastrophic if the capacitors happen to blow up but that is more likely to happen with cheap PSUs

 

I do not suggest that you open it, it's dangerous if you accidentally touch one of the capacitor lines that happen to be charged and you won't learn much either way because if the capacitors are leaking you would already be noticing it, your PSU seems fine

 

Awesome  thanks for all the help! 

[TheWai]

6 hours ago, mariushm said:

That actually looks really good, nothing to worry about. 

 

That white stuff is a rubber like material the manufacturer (Seasonic) pours around big components and wires and the material acts like a vibration dampener and also holds those components and wires in place, preventing them from coming out of the holes in the circuit board. 

The big components and the wires are soldered to the circuit board using a process called reflow - the circuit board is placed in a frame which then travels over some smaller rollers into a machine a machine which then pushes up hot liquid solder onto the bottom of the circuit board, like a water fountain. The liquid solder sticks to the leads and the wire ends and solders them to the circuit board. 

That liquid jet of solder can push up quite a bit, so in the process the thin lightweight wires that are just sitting there inserted into holes in the circuit board could be lifted up, and then the wire would not end up soldered properly, so by adding a bit of that material, the wire is glued in place and guaranteed to be soldered properly on the bottom of the board.

The capacitors are too heavy to be pushed up, but as they're so tall, the vibrations from those small rollers as the circuit board goes into the machine can cause the capacitors to shake from side to side and one or both short leads could get out of the circuit board holes. So by adding a bit of that material, they lock the big capacitors in place.

This white glue can then remain to continue to give the power supply protections against vibrations, against mechanical shocks (like for example a box full of power supplies being thrown from a truck down onto the pavement when they reach a store)

 

The capacitor that's not sitting vertical is used to smooth the voltage on the -12v output, which is only used for serial communication. It could probably even be missing, and you wouldn't notice it, because you probably never used the serial ports on your motherboard (if the motherboard even still has these on the IO shield and not just as a header)

So it's really nothing to worry about. 

 

The capacitors are KZE series from United Chemi Con, which is a very good Japanese manufacturer of capacitors (those the capacitors are probably made in Taiwan or China factory of theirs) and KZE series is very good, reliable, with very good properties (good temperature rating, endurance etc)

They're looking very good, you can tell that the top vents (the Y engraved in the tops) are looking good, they're not swollen, so visually the power supply is in great shape, from the pictures I see.

 

The fan color bothers me, but if it spins well and doesn't vibrate or cause issues, it's probably fine. I don't think the fan has a connector, so if you want to replace it you probably have to cut the leads and attach the leads from the new fan to those wires (either by soldering or by twisting the wires and isolating them with some electrical tape... soldering would be ideal, would make it look professional)

 

 

You sir are a bank of knowledge! I’ve learned a lot! Thank you  

[TheWai]

6 hours ago, Turbof1 said:

That looks very clean; I'd keep using that PSU. Just be sure to put nothing too taxing in your system. Maybe blow out the little bit of dust too.

 

But like others said: no bulged capacitors, no corrosion on the PCB, nothing that even looks out of the ordinary. At the end of the day, it is an electric device. It can always fail, but in reality this PSU should be safe to use for some more years.

 

Maybe try to run the PSU outside the PC case to check if the fan spins normally and decently. I can't possibly imagine that being a problem, but if it gives you further assurance, I'd do that as well.

 

If you are going to overclock, get a power meter plug to check on wattage. Make sure you aren't pushing close to the rated max wattage of the psu.

Good tip! Luckily I just transferred my computer to a new case where the psu sits facing the back, so I was able to watch the fan spin. Everything seems to be working!

[TheWai]

So this might be a discussion for another thread, but yesterday, I left Unigine Heaven on and went for a shower. When I came back, my computer screen was black and the GPU fan speed ramped up to 100%. I had to force restart. When I booted back up, I ran it again to see what happened, and it seems like maybe after running it around 15 minutes ish, that would happen. The GPU temps weren’t crazy. Topped out at 69-70 degrees. I checked voltages after 1 run and they were similar to the picture I posted earlier in this thread, so I don’t think the problem is the PSU, but I could be wrong. 
 

I read on other threads of people having similar problems. One person who solved it ended up having to reapply the thermal paste to their GPU. I’ve never taken apart a GPU before so this is my last resort LOL. Would anyone have any idea what else could be the issue, or if there are any settings in the software I can adjust? 
 

Note, this card was bought used and I’ve been using it for two weeks now. I think I didn’t have problems previously cause I was only playing non-graphic intense games. Another change would be that I move the system into a new case yesterday. 

[Turbof1]

18 hours ago, TheWai said:

So this might be a discussion for another thread, but yesterday, I left Unigine Heaven on and went for a shower. When I came back, my computer screen was black and the GPU fan speed ramped up to 100%. I had to force restart. When I booted back up, I ran it again to see what happened, and it seems like maybe after running it around 15 minutes ish, that would happen. The GPU temps weren’t crazy. Topped out at 69-70 degrees. I checked voltages after 1 run and they were similar to the picture I posted earlier in this thread, so I don’t think the problem is the PSU, but I could be wrong. 
 

I read on other threads of people having similar problems. One person who solved it ended up having to reapply the thermal paste to their GPU. I’ve never taken apart a GPU before so this is my last resort LOL. Would anyone have any idea what else could be the issue, or if there are any settings in the software I can adjust? 
 

Note, this card was bought used and I’ve been using it for two weeks now. I think I didn’t have problems previously cause I was only playing non-graphic intense games. Another change would be that I move the system into a new case yesterday. 

Did you overclock the GPU?

 

Maybe it is crashing due not getting enough power. Try to raise the voltage a tiny bit and see if that gets it stable. Do not change anything else for now. Not sure if you are using the 1060 or the 570; the 1060 isn't known for having systematic issues. Maybe try to reseat the card too.

 

It could be the thermal paste too; maybe a small part of the card gets extremely hot. Not sure which exact 1060 6gb you have, but it shouldn't be too much a hassle to replace the paste.

[TheWai]

21 hours ago, Turbof1 said:

Did you overclock the GPU?

 

Maybe it is crashing due not getting enough power. Try to raise the voltage a tiny bit and see if that gets it stable. Do not change anything else for now. Not sure if you are using the 1060 or the 570; the 1060 isn't known for having systematic issues. Maybe try to reseat the card too.

 

It could be the thermal paste too; maybe a small part of the card gets extremely hot. Not sure which exact 1060 6gb you have, but it shouldn't be too much a hassle to replace the paste.

Nope, no overclocking from my end but it might come factory overclocked. I am using a ASUS Dual OC GTX 1060 6gb. It's the one with the white shroud and two fans. So I replaced the thermal paste yesterday and reseated the card. The existing thermal paste did look a bit on the dry side, but not as bad as pictures I've seen online. I cleaned it off and applied new paste and did another run today. It last much longer, but the same thing happened after an 1hr 20min with temps maxing out at 70.

 

So I used MSI afterburner and bumped up the voltage by 10% and maxed out the power and temp limit while keeping the clocks the same. I also tweaked the fan curve. Temps actually dropped from 70 to 64. However, after about 20-30 minutes, it got the black screen crash again.

 

Would it be possible that the riser cable on my vertical GPU mount is contributing to the issue? I'm going to install the gpu directly into the motherboard and try again, but would that even be a possibility?