Is this an indicator of my power supply dying?

[Slywolf15]

I have a 480 watt power supply. For about a month or so my computer sometimes has problems where it will randomly shut down and when I try and turn it back on, it turns on for a second then back off. It eventually works after awhile but i wasn't really sure what to make of it. This can also be rather annoying while playing games and such. I thought originally it might have been a video card issue due to it seemed more frequent during games but after cleaning the fan on my card, checking to make sure it worked, and also cleaning my intake and outake fans, I don't believe that's the issue after all. My computer hasn't been issuing any strange noises or anything else that might seem to be a problem. If anyone might have any input I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[DDRtists]

Sounds like an overheating problem to me, thats normally what happens. It's more than likely not turning back on like you said because it's still hot, and letting it sit cools it down enough so it comes back on then.

 

[Slapshot136]

Sounds like an overheating problem to me, thats normally what happens. It's more than likely not turning back on like you said because it's still hot, and letting it sit cools it down enough so it comes back on then.

x2

try running something to monitor temps, both while idle (measure twice, once after the system has been doing nothing for 15 min and again after 30 min, they should be the same) and while gaming, and post what you got

 

[eazyduzit]

Pop the side of your computer and stick a desk fan next to it

Thats a quick fix. lol

 

[Slywolf15]

x2

try running something to monitor temps, both while idle (measure twice, once after the system has been doing nothing for 15 min and again after 30 min, they should be the same) and while gaming, and post what you got

Any ideas on a good program to monitor computer temperatures while running games and such?

 

[Slapshot136]

most motherboard makers usually provide some tool, be it asus probe or nvidia control panel or etc., those would be recommended first, but if you cant find any that would work for you, then i would recommend speedfan as long as you use it only for monitoring temperatures

 

[Slywolf15]

Alright so I started Fallout 3 to see if things got hot. I played for about 10 minutes then a blue screen flashed and the computer restarted. When it was booting up it showed the cpu was only at 40c so I don't think it's an over-heating issue but I don't know what it could be.

 

[DDRtists]

If you don't think it's an overheating problem ( I still personally think it is... ), then it may be corrupted RAM as well, as then it will not work as needed and the computer will crash as it got back invalid data.

I still say overheating though, as thats a direct description of most cases of overheating...

 

[Slapshot136]

what was your normal idle temp? did it change after half an hour? wait for your idle temp to stabilize, and then see if it's acceptable

is your computer stable for long periods of time if you don't do much on it? (just browsing the internet or something)?

before you boot into windows, windows adds a memory diagnostic tool that you can use to check for bad ram, but i dont think that this is an issue either..

 

[Slywolf15]

If you don't think it's an overheating problem ( I still personally think it is... ), then it may be corrupted RAM as well, as then it will not work as needed and the computer will crash as it got back invalid data.

I still say overheating though, as thats a direct description of most cases of overheating...

I don't think it's corrupted RAM but I can see. You still may be right about the overheating, I thought about it and it sounds the same to me but I can't tell what's overheating.

what was your normal idle temp? did it change after half an hour? wait for your idle temp to stabilize, and then see if it's acceptable

is your computer stable for long periods of time if you don't do much on it? (just browsing the internet or something)?

before you boot into windows, windows adds a memory diagnostic tool that you can use to check for bad ram, but i dont think that this is an issue either..

Yes my Core temperature is consistent and stays around 40-45c. (I figured the core temperature on speedfan was the cpu temperature but my opening bios temperature is about the same.)

I did try playing Fallout 3 again to get my computer to show the blue screen so I could see what was up but I played almost an hour without issue this time. : /