PC Flat-Out Crashing Under Load

[joeltech]

So, my friend's PC has been having a bunch of issues lately. The big one was solved after a BIOS update & settings reset, which was causing him to get significantly lower performance. In doing this, it reintroduced a problem that he said he hasn't had for about a year, but that it was probably the cause of the poor performance issue.

 

We have been kind-of logging our issues and results in a google doc (link)

 

His Specs:

(iBuyPower Prebuilt BTW)

CPU: Core i9-9900K

GPU: ASUS Turbo RTX 2080TI-11G (Post Recall)

Motherboard: ASRock z390 Phantom Gaming 4-IB (iBuyPower OEM)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64 GB 3200MHz (only 1 dimm is inserted as the other is giving us issues as well)

Storage: 1tb Samsung 970 Evo

PSU: 600w iBuyPower Special

 

With his PC crashing like this, It leads me to believe that it could be a power draw issue, and upon bringing his parts list into PCPartpicker, my suspicions on this being a power supply/power draw issue have been kind-of confirmed, with the average power draw for his parts hovering around 500 watts, while he has a sketchy 600w psu.

(PCPartPicker List - Some random parts to fill in what I don't know)

 

 

Would anyone have any suggestions as to a course of action? I think recommending him a new PSU would be a start, but trying to get some more eyes on this couldn't hurt as maybe someone will see something that we missed.

 

 

Update: His PC has gone back to doing both the crashes and poor performance.

[Action_Johnson]

It's probably the PSU. 2080Ti + 9900K is asking alot from 600W. 

 

I would start with getting an RM850x or similar, and doing a reformat + fresh windows install. Does iBuypower use off the shelf stuff, or proprietary? If he can get drivers for everything as if we was building a system from scratch, that'd be ideal. 

 

Aside from his power problems, I bet the slowdowns are software related, hence the fresh install. 

[joeltech]

1 minute ago, Action_Johnson said:

It's probably the PSU. 2080Ti + 9900K is asking alot from 600W. 

 

I would start with getting an RM850x or similar, and doing a reformat + fresh windows install. Does iBuypower use off the shelf stuff, or proprietary? If he can get drivers for everything as if we was building a system from scratch, that'd be ideal. 

I went through updating all his drivers and such with him,

he doesn't have the budget for a new psu atm which is going to be tough unless we manually limit power draw in bios or something.

 

As he's going to be upgrading to either a 3080 or 3090, we've already picked out a new PSU (corsair hx1000) for when he can afford it.

[Entropy.]

6 minutes ago, Action_Johnson said:

It's probably the PSU. 2080Ti + 9900K is asking alot from 600W. 

 

I would start with getting an RM850x or similar, and doing a reformat + fresh windows install. Does iBuypower use off the shelf stuff, or proprietary? If he can get drivers for everything as if we was building a system from scratch, that'd be ideal. 

 

Aside from his power problems, I bet the slowdowns are software related, hence the fresh install. 

yes, but actually no. 600w PSUs Are actually capable of handling a good amount, the reason why this is crashing likely is because of transient spikes, but it could be due to raw power draw, or perhaps the mothboard vrms, the pro4 sucks, so OP, if you overclocked, undo that, and see if the problem is fixed. As for the PSU, if that turns out to be the problem I'd probably recommend the enermax revolution D.F 850w provided you're in the us, excellent unit. RMX is fine though, this should be just cheaper. 

[Entropy.]

10 minutes ago, Action_Johnson said:

It's probably the PSU. 2080Ti + 9900K is asking alot from 600W. 

 

I would start with getting an RM850x or similar, and doing a reformat + fresh windows install. Does iBuypower use off the shelf stuff, or proprietary? If he can get drivers for everything as if we was building a system from scratch, that'd be ideal. 

 

Aside from his power problems, I bet the slowdowns are software related, hence the fresh install. 

That was a garbage explainer, let me try again. 600w PSUS can likely handle even more power-demanding components (optimum tech tested a 3080gaming trio and a 10900k@5.1ghz on a 600w corsair sf, both platinum and gold, and they ran just fine under heavy real-world load (battlefiled 5, 4k, max settings iirc).  but It'll depend on the specific PSU. Lower-end PSUs usually aren't capable of handling transient spikes as well as higher-end power supplies that use quality components. 

[Entropy.]

6 minutes ago, joeltech said:

I went through updating all his drivers and such with him,

he doesn't have the budget for a new psu atm which is going to be tough unless we manually limit power draw in bios or something.

 

As he's going to be upgrading to either a 3080 or 3090, we've already picked out a new PSU (corsair hx1000) for when he can afford it.

Try setting power limits for the CPU and undervolting the GPU, see if that fixes it. You can undervolt the GPU with afterburner for a relatively lower performance cost, and you'll be able to save a decent amount of power, you could also try disabling some cores if your friend doesn't need them, for the time being.