Windows 7 Machine suddenly shuts off, then power button shows slow blinking

Nomad of Norad

Extraordinary Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2009
Okay, I recently replaced the power supply on my desktop machine. This was after, this last Sunday, I went to turn the machine on and the power button wouldn't do anything. It was dead as a Dalek. I replaced the power supply with a Thermaltake TR2 600W ATX PS, and the machine powered on fine. After that, the machine ran for two hours without any trouble, and then suddenly BAM!!! ...it shut off all at once, and the power button started blinking slowly on and off at me. Pressing the power button didn't do anything, it just continued flashing blue at me. (The button always shows blue when on.) I cut power to it and after that it started again, and gave no trouble at all for a good 12 or 14 hours, when I finally shut down for the night.

Today, it ran for probably 14 or 15 hours, but then about the time I was almost ready to shut down and head to bed, BAM!!! ...it shut down again, and did the slow blinking power-button thing at me again. I reached back to the back of the machine and flipped the little rocker switch on it off and then back on, and was able to power it back on again.

My machine is an AMD FX 8320 Eight-Core Processor 3.5 GHz, 16 GB of ram, Win7 Ultimate, 64bit.

I'm not for certain what motherboard it is without opening the case again, but it's probably the MSI 970A-646 (because that's the box at the top of my stack of boxes-stuff-came-out-of), tho it might have been one of the others.

The case is something by GLite, I don't remember the exact model on that.

The new powersupply, as mentioned above, is a Thermaltake TR2 600W.

What do I do from here? How do I determine what's gone screwy? oO

Do I have a faulty PS, or is there something wrong with my motherboard?
 
Hi,
I know it's a pain but try going through all your connections again just to make sure they are properly snapped into place. Can you post which gpu your using as well please.
 
Well, I've had this machine for a good while without troubles, it only started doing this after I installed the new PS. Nothing else has changed. Mind you, the fan (opening) in the new PS is on the top of the PS, while in the old PS it was on the bottom. The PS is at the bottom of the tower.
 
If that's the only thing that's changed then i would as suggested above check your connections, make sure something daft like a bit of fluff or whatever hasn't got into a connection or something . I'd also try reseating your gpu and RAM. Whats the system like if you stress it? Try running Prime95 and watch your temps too. If it's a heat problem it'll soon become clear. If the machine shuts down again then you may have a stability issue or (and i really hope this isn't the case) your PSU might be faulty.
 
Well, there is one difference: the way the part of the psu that has the fan blades in it is facing. With the old psu, the side with the fan blades was placed facing towards the OUTside of the machine (i.e. down towards the desk, and there was definitely a coating of dust on the vent-covering beneath it when I changed PSUs out last Sunday), when I mounted the new one, I wound up placing it such that the side with the fan blades was now facing towards the INside of the machine. I'm going to open the machine again and flip the PSU the other way and see if that helps.
 
Well, one interesting thing... when I flipped the PSU over and prepared to mount it back down, it revealed a chart with some specs on the PSU which had been obscured to the motherboard side of the case before and that I hadn't noticed when I was originally mounting the PSU in place. When looking into the case, with the feet of the case downward from where the PSU is mounted, this chart is now rightside up and facing me. So, that tells me I've got it turned the right way now. Irony is I'd turned it the way I had it before because there were some other, small printed elements elsewhere on the PSU that were rightside up when I had the PSU mounted the other way, and that was what had confused me before into mounting it the wrong way up. oO Anyway, we'll see how this goes over the next few days.
 
Well, it went all day without trouble yesterday, going probably a good half a day or more before I powered off for the night. Today, I powered on the machine, walked away to do other stuff like I usually do (I usually give it an hour to let everything finish launching and stuff, because otherwise foreground actions are too slow). After roughly a half hour, the machine suddenly shut off, giving me the slow-flashing-power-button again.

When I turned the PSU over in the machine earlier, I'd looked at the connections from it on the mother board, and far as I could tell everything was snuggly and firmly plugged in.

These shutdowns seem to be completely random. If it were something that happened when I was doing some activity that brings a massive upswing in computer horsepower or something, I could key in on that... but the first time it shut off, I was simply reading a web page. Another time I was watching a youtube video. This time I had merely turned the machine on and let it go through its usual launching of background stuff.

I guess at this stage, about the only thing I can try is replacing the new PSU with another one and hope the problem goes away. Thing is, could the PSU itself be what's shutting down? I.e. is there some sort of safety-tripwire thing inside the PSU that makes the PSU itself shut off if it thinks it detects a problem somewhere?
 
It might well be the PSU. You've already mentioned that the pc was fine before you replaced the PSU and since then it's been shutting down on it's own accord. If it's possible to test the PSU in a different machine then I'd try that otherwise can you fit the old psu and see if the same thing happens? If the pc runs fine then you have the culprit.
 
Well, the old PSU completely died. Or at least it acted like it had died: Everything was fine the day before, I came in the next day and.... punching the power button did nothing at all.

I guess I'll need to go buy yet another PSU.

Thing is, just a week or so before that, my primary monitor did the same thing: simply refused to turn on no matter what. Up to that point it had always been left in standby mode when I was done for the day, so it would come up automatically when the computer was turned on. I powered the system off like usual the night before, and the monitor went into standby like usual. I came in the next day, powered the computer on... and the main monitor never came back on. The the power button on it was completely dark, and did nothing when punched. The monitor itself was from 2009, though. The current computer is a lot newer, not more than a couple years old.

The two monitors and the PC are on a UPS, tho, so it is really unlikely there was a voltage spike or something that fried anything from that end of things. The UPS itself is just a few months old. I got it in early July. It is an APC brand, rated for up to 69 minutes runtime, tho with my own settup it doesn't last near that long before running out of juice, but I mostly got it because I was tired of summer storms doing fraction-of-a-second power drops and making my machine reboot.
 
Well I'll keep my fingers crossed that all goes well and you can get a refund.
 
This is not much help but on my PC slow blinking PB indicates the PC is in sleep mode. If I move the mouse or tap the KB it wakes up. Long shot I know but a bad idea is better than none.
Good Luck
 
Well, Friday, October 23rd, I installed a different PSU, and have had no sudden-shutdown issues since. Now my problem is, after all this was dealt with, I discovered the place I'd bought the earlier replacement PSU from has a 15-day return policy... and it took me longer than 15 days to get the NEW replacement PSU in. oO I'm HOPING I can get them to take back the now-apparently-faulty earlier new PSU. I've.... been.... sitting on it now trying to nerve myself up into going back over there with it and talking to them about it.
 
Thanks for updating your thread Nomad and good luck with the return.
 
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