System Turns On for a Second, Then Turns Off

Gessler555 · October 13, 2018

**What I'm about to ask is something of a problem which I used to have (no longer do), and I managed to find out where the problem was, but what I want to know now is WHAT was actually causing the problem.**

So I was running my rig (specs below) for about 3 years now, and for the last 6 months or so, I used to have this problem where the system would turn on when I push the Power button, the lights & fans would come alive and spin for like a split second before shutting down. I do this like 3-4 times and each time the same result, and then finally the system boots up on the 5th or 6th attempt and everything works fine once I'm there. I ran benchmarks, stress tests and everything was in top shape, nothing I could find which was glaringly wrong in anything that was detectable through software.

Sometimes, when I used to turn off the PSU switch, unplug the power cord and plug it back in and turn on, it used to boot up no problem. But only like 60% of the time, not always. Additionally, the problem seemed to manifest more severely when I shut down the system and come back to turn it on in like a few hours. But when I turn it off and only come back to it after quite a while (like the next morning), USUALLY it used to boot up in the very first attempt.

I clearly suspected this was a power supply issue (Antec VP650P v2) but I never really got around to digging further as I was pretty busy these last few months (and as the system wasn't just outright refusing to boot, I treated this rather as an annoyance than a genuine problem). However recently, I did quite the upgrade to my system with a new 1080Ti, and as I was aware of the potentially faulty power supply I had, I went ahead and bought a new Corsair RM850x to replace it with...wasn't gonna risk the 1080Ti.

Sure enough, once I swapped the PSU, the problem was gone. Now whenever I press the Power button, the system just boots up flawlessly, like it did when I first put everything together back in 2015.

But what I wanna know is, what actually went on there? What exactly was causing this problem with my old PSU?

Surely I can't be the only guy that faced a similar issue? Anyone fittin' to share some knowledge/experience? I just wanna know what the problem was, in case it turns out to be something I can fix in future. Are PSUs known to do this when they go bad?

Specs:

i7-4790k (liquid cooled by Corsair H80i v1)

MSI Z97 Gaming 7 MoBo

Corsair Vengeance 16gb (2x8) DDR3, 1866 mhz

MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G*** (replaced with MSI GTX 1080Ti Gaming)

Samsung 840 EVO 120gb SSD running Win10 Pro 64-bit

2 x 2TB 7200rpm HDDs (a Seagate Barracuda and a WD Enterprise Edition)

Optical Drive

3 x case fans

Antec VP650P v2 (replaced with Corsair RM850x)

*** 3.5G duh

Note that in both cases (with the new & old PSUs), I was getting power via a UPS. I even tried using different UPS models but it didn't effect the problem in any way.

jake765111 · October 13, 2018

47 minutes ago, Gessler555 said:

**What I'm about to ask is something of a problem which I used to have (no longer do), and I managed to find out where the problem was, but what I want to know now is WHAT was actually causing the problem.**

So I was running my rig (specs below) for about 3 years now, and for the last 6 months or so, I used to have this problem where the system would turn on when I push the Power button, the lights & fans would come alive and spin for like a split second before shutting down. I do this like 3-4 times and each time the same result, and then finally the system boots up on the 5th or 6th attempt and everything works fine once I'm there. I ran benchmarks, stress tests and everything was in top shape, nothing I could find which was glaringly wrong in anything that was detectable through software.

Sometimes, when I used to turn off the PSU switch, unplug the power cord and plug it back in and turn on, it used to boot up no problem. But only like 60% of the time, not always. Additionally, the problem seemed to manifest more severely when I shut down the system and come back to turn it on in like a few hours. But when I turn it off and only come back to it after quite a while (like the next morning), USUALLY it used to boot up in the very first attempt.

I clearly suspected this was a power supply issue (Antec VP650P v2) but I never really got around to digging further as I was pretty busy these last few months (and as the system wasn't just outright refusing to boot, I treated this rather as an annoyance than a genuine problem). However recently, I did quite the upgrade to my system with a new 1080Ti, and as I was aware of the potentially faulty power supply I had, I went ahead and bought a new Corsair RM850x to replace it with...wasn't gonna risk the 1080Ti.

Sure enough, once I swapped the PSU, the problem was gone. Now whenever I press the Power button, the system just boots up flawlessly, like it did when I first put everything together back in 2015.

But what I wanna know is, what actually went on there? What exactly was causing this problem with my old PSU?

Surely I can't be the only guy that faced a similar issue? Anyone fittin' to share some knowledge/experience? I just wanna know what the problem was, in case it turns out to be something I can fix in future. Are PSUs known to do this when they go bad?

Specs:

i7-4790k (liquid cooled by Corsair H80i v1)

MSI Z97 Gaming 7 MoBo

Corsair Vengeance 16gb (2x8) DDR3, 1866 mhz

MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G*** (replaced with MSI GTX 1080Ti Gaming)

Samsung 840 EVO 120gb SSD running Win10 Pro 64-bit

2 x 2TB 7200rpm HDDs (a Seagate Barracuda and a WD Enterprise Edition)

Optical Drive

3 x case fans

Antec VP650P v2 (replaced with Corsair RM850x)

*** 3.5G duh

Note that in both cases (with the new & old PSUs), I was getting power via a UPS. I even tried using different UPS models but it didn't effect the problem in any way.