Micro Brownouts?

[Fermented_Goat]

This is all mostly just conjecture and a theory at this point, but it seems to make sense at this time.

 

For the past six months ,and perhaps coincidentally ever since we had some work done on the house, I have been suffering with kernel power failures on my machines. Initially it was on my late 2012 iMac that I had owned for a year, and other than having its screen replaced due to ghosting, it ran fine. I was convinced at the time that the iMac was malfunctioning, as it would shut down on both sides of my partition on Windows and OSX, almost always during high power consumption GPU tasks like video editing and playing games. At the time I never considered that it could be anything other than the Mac that was at fault. On sending the iMac in twice for assessment by Apple, they couldnt find anything wrong with it, and it never suffered any power failures when it was in their care. Due to my persistence the engineers decided to replace the logic board, I guess as a kind of fail safe fix. This obviously did nothing and I was suffering power failures soon after I got it back. I then put in for a complete replacement, and got one through Applecare that immediately went on ebay. I sold it and set out to build my own machine.

 

Specs:

i7 5820k

H100i

MSI X99 SLI Plus

16gb Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4

EVGA GTX 980 SC ACX 2.0

Corsair RM750 80+ Gold

 

I built this machine about two weeks ago and up until a few days ago it worked great, but over the last few days it has started to act exactly the same as the iMac did, shutting itself off when playing games, particularly World of Tanks, and Skyrim. This started to make me consider the possibility of the issue being with the power outlet or the mains supply. This could just be a coincidence but the power failures almost exclusively occur in the afternoon/evening. When power consumption in the household and neighborhood are much higher than during the earlier hours. My iMac would work flawlessly during the day time and only start to malfunction later on in the evening. 

 

The actual mechanics of the shut down are this: With the iMac it would simply go black, my external monitor would remain on, and nothing else in the room would lose power. I would then have to turn the plug physically off at the switch for several seconds, and then on again for the machine to work. I had tried a few different plugs.

 

With the new machine both monitors go black, but due to my case having a windowed side I can see that none of the components have turned off due to all of the L.E.D's remaining turned on. They dont appear to flicker. Sometimes the machine will reboot, other times it remains blank and I will have to physically press the reset button. I have tried several plugs including routing an extension from another room, neither of which seemed to make any difference. 

 

At this point I am considering buying a UPS as a fix, I know I should probably have one already but up until now it seemed like an unnecessary expenditure. Or could the problem simply be a coincidence and it is my hardware that is at fault?

 

Any advice would be absolutely amazing at this point as I am only a amateur and don't have much technical knowledge at all.

 

Thanks for reading

 

Joshua

[ApolloX75]

Sounds like you need a line conditioner. Most modern power supplies have the ability to filter incoming power to adjust for normal highs and lows but by the sounds of it your fluctuations are exceeding that ability.

It makes sense with your observation of the issue happening only at peak usage times. A good idea is to buy a decent multimeter and probe an outlet during the evening randomly to see if it drops. Measure it in the morning too so you have a good comparison.

A call to your electric company might be in order too, could be an issue with the lines coming in, but it could also be an issue with the wiring in your home. If its the wiring in your home then unfortunately they won't touch it, they only handle the mains to your house, not in it.

[Crosseyed Sniper]

This is all mostly just conjecture and a theory at this point, but it seems to make sense at this time.

 

For the past six months ,and perhaps coincidentally ever since we had some work done on the house, I have been suffering with kernel power failures on my machines. Initially it was on my late 2012 iMac that I had owned for a year, and other than having its screen replaced due to ghosting, it ran fine. I was convinced at the time that the iMac was malfunctioning, as it would shut down on both sides of my partition on Windows and OSX, almost always during high power consumption GPU tasks like video editing and playing games. At the time I never considered that it could be anything other than the Mac that was at fault. On sending the iMac in twice for assessment by Apple, they couldnt find anything wrong with it, and it never suffered any power failures when it was in their care. Due to my persistence the engineers decided to replace the logic board, I guess as a kind of fail safe fix. This obviously did nothing and I was suffering power failures soon after I got it back. I then put in for a complete replacement, and got one through Applecare that immediately went on ebay. I sold it and set out to build my own machine.

 

Specs:

i7 5820k

H100i

MSI X99 SLI Plus

16gb Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4

EVGA GTX 980 SC ACX 2.0

Corsair RM750 80+ Gold

 

I built this machine about two weeks ago and up until a few days ago it worked great, but over the last few days it has started to act exactly the same as the iMac did, shutting itself off when playing games, particularly World of Tanks, and Skyrim. This started to make me consider the possibility of the issue being with the power outlet or the mains supply. This could just be a coincidence but the power failures almost exclusively occur in the afternoon/evening. When power consumption in the household and neighborhood are much higher than during the earlier hours. My iMac would work flawlessly during the day time and only start to malfunction later on in the evening. 

 

The actual mechanics of the shut down are this: With the iMac it would simply go black, my external monitor would remain on, and nothing else in the room would lose power. I would then have to turn the plug physically off at the switch for several seconds, and then on again for the machine to work. I had tried a few different plugs.

 

With the new machine both monitors go black, but due to my case having a windowed side I can see that none of the components have turned off due to all of the L.E.D's remaining turned on. They dont appear to flicker. Sometimes the machine will reboot, other times it remains blank and I will have to physically press the reset button. I have tried several plugs including routing an extension from another room, neither of which seemed to make any difference. 

 

At this point I am considering buying a UPS as a fix, I know I should probably have one already but up until now it seemed like an unnecessary expenditure. Or could the problem simply be a coincidence and it is my hardware that is at fault?

 

Any advice would be absolutely amazing at this point as I am only a amateur and don't have much technical knowledge at all.

 

Thanks for reading

 

Joshua

 

What all do you have plugged into the outlet at one time? If you have several other things plugged in, try it with just the computer and monitor only and see how that goes for awhile. Also, have you tried any outlets on the other side of the house? Could be loose wiring in that particular outlet. I am no electrician, but why not at least give my 2 suggestions a try? 

 

Best of luck to you and please let us know when you get things worked out and what the issue was. Could be helpful to others.