Really weird thing just happened…

[Mark Kaine]

So Im playing Monster Hunter World, picture freezes unexpectedly, the light in my room (the whole house possibly) goes out, monitor goes out, rbg of my gpu goes out, all leds go off, then a faint "electro" sound could be heard (i do think that was my room lamp, not necessarily the pc, but it might) psu makes a light click sound - picture comes on again, the game *did not* crash… and after a few seconds of thinking, i just kept playing lol…

 

 

Now im not sure if the power went out in the whole house, the modem is downstairs and that obviously didnt disconnect as i was in a multiplayer session when that happened, or if it was just the floor Im on… but Im just curious how this can happen, or what even happened, my first thought was the psu saved my ass, but now im not so sure anymore ?

 

Basically the whole "outage" was less than 1 second, if i had to guess,  but im still wondering  why my pc didnt crash? i mean there was definitely no power whatsoever for a split second or so. 

 

 

 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

So Im playing Monster Hunter World, picture freezes unexpectedly, the light in my room (the whole house possibly) goes out, monitor goes out, rbg of my gpu goes out, all leds go off, then a faint "electro" sound could be heard (i do think that was my room lamp, not necessarily the pc, but it might) psu makes a light click sound - picture comes on again, the game *did not* crash… and after a few seconds of thinking, i just kept playing lol…

 

 

Now im not sure if the power went out in the whole house, the modem is downstairs and that obviously didnt disconnect as i was in a multiplayer session when that happened, or if it was just the floor Im on… but Im just curious how this can happen, or what even happened, my first thought was the psu saved my ass, but now im not so sure anymore ?

 

Basically the whole "outage" was less than 1 second, if i had to guess,  but im still wondering  why my pc didnt crash? i mean there was definitely no power whatsoever for a split second or so. 

 

 

 

Maybe there was enough "stored" (not really stored) power to keep the pc running for that split second it was out? Like, you didn't have to log back in or anything?

[CommanderAlex]

Perhaps contact your local electrical utility to see if there any problems with their grid? 

3 minutes ago, Cool_Evlo said:

Maybe there was enough "stored" (not really stored) power to keep the pc running for that split second it was out? Like, you didn't have to log back in or anything?

Could have been if capacitors in the power supply were big enough to hold the required amount of charge to run for a second. 

[Murasaki]

1 minute ago, Cool_Evlo said:

Maybe there was enough "stored" (not really stored) power to keep the pc running for that split second it was out? Like, you didn't have to log back in or anything?

I remember once the power cut for a split second and my system kept chugging, meanwhile my 10 year old Athlon PC in the other room did not recover. Newer PSUs definitely handle it better!

[Mark Kaine]

8 minutes ago, Cool_Evlo said:

Maybe there was enough "stored" (not really stored) power to keep the pc running for that split second it was out? Like, you didn't have to log back in or anything?

Thats what i thought, i mean psus do have some kind of thing where they can supply power for a few ms (i think) but the thing is the leds went all off, so there wasnt "power" from the looks of it. 

But i guess technically thats still a good explanation what probably happened.

 

And no, i didnt need log in, the game didnt even crash, nor kicked me from the session, *thats* what confuses me, because  the game even kicks you if you look at it wrong usually lol. 

[Murasaki]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

And no, i didnt need log in, the game didnt even crash, nor kicked me from the session, *thats* what confuses me, because  the game even kicks you if you look at it wrong usually lol. 

Online games usually won't kick you out immediately, there will be a small window of recovery before you "time out".

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Thats what i thought, i mean psus do have some kind of thing where they can supply power for a few ms (i think) but the thing is the leds went all off, so there wasnt "power" from the looks of it. 

But i guess technically thats a good explanation what probably happened.

 

And no, i didnt need log in, the game didnt even crash, nor kicked me from the session, *thats* what confuses me, because  the game even kicks you if you look at it wrong usually lol. 

I think RAM can actually hold data for a very little while, even after the PC is off, not sure though, but that might have contributed.

[Moonzy]

It's called brownout, instead of a blackout

 

In your case it probably was mild enough that the capacitance in your power supplies could handle it

[Mark Kaine]

38 minutes ago, Murasaki said:

Online games usually won't kick you out immediately, there will be a small window of recovery before you "time out".

True, but this game... it even kicks you for alt tabbing (most of the time)But yeeah, it was probably short enough it didnt even register.

24 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

It's called brownout, instead of a blackout

 

In your case it probably was mild enough that the capacitance in your power supplies could handle it

Oh, thats what its called, i was always wondering what people mean with that… i see.

 

Actually this does happen occasionally, maybe twice a year, but then the PC usually  reboots or turns off, and the modem also, as does the clock in our kitchen (havent checked that yet) so yeah, maybe it was just really short (funny how i registered all these things turning off in quick succession, when the gpu led went out i definitely thought it'll crash now , but it didnt lol )

[Murasaki]

28 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

brownout

when things shit themselves but not entirely break down

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Murasaki said:

when things shit themselves but not entirely break down

#relatable

[Chiyawa]

31 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

It's called brownout, instead of a blackout

Definitely. If you stay in country with 240V, you'll notice that when the power grid faces a brown out (a sudden drop of voltage), the PC PSU can still run because it can, in certain cases, run at 90V AC (Although 12V rail may saw a great dip of voltage).

 

Also, larger wattage PSU has more capacitor to stored its charge.

[Mark Kaine]

5 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

Definitely. If you stay in country with 240V, you'll notice that when the power grid faces a brown out (a sudden drop of voltage), the PC PSU can still run because it can, in certain cases, run at 90V AC (Although 12V rail may saw a great dip of voltage).

 

Also, larger wattage PSU has more capacitor to stored its charge.

I actually recorded it all… should see it in the overlay i guess, tho i havent even checked yet if the recording is corrupted or something. o.o

 

[Chiyawa]

Anyway, after digging a little bit, I realised that modern PSU has 'hold up time'. It basically allows modern PSU to operate to a certain time before completely shut down (usually in milliseconds).

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/thermaltake-toughpower-gf1-argb-850-w-gold/2.html

*Scroll down until you see Hold-up Time section, which provide a brief explanation of it.

[Mark Kaine]

37 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

Anyway, after digging a little bit, I realised that modern PSU has 'hold up time

yeap, thats the term  i was looking for earlier  thing is my old psu would just shut down when this happened, so i wasnt sure.

gotta look up the difference i guess, or the "outage" was just shorter.

 

Edit: actually

 

 

old psu: 

 

new psu:

 

 

old one had a longer hold up time, but worse "pwr_ok incactive to DC loss delay" maybe thats why, who knows…

 

 

[Chiyawa]

Or it could be that your old system generally uses higher voltage, which means if the power is out, the PSU generally has not enough power to sustain the voltage, and thus the electronic component powered off. Old DDR2 RAM uses about 1.8V if not mistaken, compared to XMP enabled DDR4 RAM which only uses 1.35V.

[Mark Kaine]

28 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

Or it could be that your old system generally uses higher voltage, which means if the power is out, the PSU generally has not enough power to sustain the voltage, and thus the electronic component powered off. Old DDR2 RAM uses about 1.8V if not mistaken, compared to XMP enabled DDR4 RAM which only uses 1.35V.

Ah, but its the same exact system. xD

 

Basically 

58 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

incactive to DC loss delay

this sounds like exactly  what could have happened, the "delay" on the old psu was too short, hence it rather pulled an emergency shutdown, which seems to make the longer "holdup time" it had rather useless, if these things mean what they sound like… 

 

 

 

[wONKEyeYEs]

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

*did not* crash…

Hold Up Time, Overload And Short Circuit Test, Temperature

Hold Up Time

Although modern power grids are stable and of fairly high quality, there are always some power fluctuations. Modern power supplies have capacitor banks to handle such power fluctuations for a certain period, called the hold up time. The ATX standard for hold up time is a minimum of 16 milliseconds.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/psu-test-equipment,2657-4.html

[Mark Kaine]

So I checked the video, its a bit laggy but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary, theres also no voltage drop on the gpu visible, 1.012v throughout… Almost like it didnt happen except it did, basically like the PC rebooted within 1 second but thats obviously not possible.

 

 

17 hours ago, wONKEyeYEs said:

Hold Up Time, Overload And Short Circuit Test, Temperature

Hold Up Time

Although modern power grids are stable and of fairly high quality, there are always some power fluctuations. Modern power supplies have capacitor banks to handle such power fluctuations for a certain period, called the hold up time. The ATX standard for hold up time is a minimum of 16 milliseconds.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/psu-test-equipment,2657-4.html

yeah, but then why the pc with another psu with longer hold up time would just shut down in the same (seemingly) situation, do you think it could be this "incactive to DC loss delay" thing instead?