I made a post in the rant topic but want to post my follow-up separately, so as not to clog that thread up with informative and non-ranting responses.
I recently built a gaming and hobbyist CAD PC that I can't use for either because it crashes or blue screens under heavy loads (such as gaming or stress testing). I've narrowed down the problem to the wall power. I have to use this PC on the same house circuit as a sump pump and a dehumidifier and the PC seems to crash most when one or both of these activate. I did an 8-hour stress test on the CPU on a separate house circuit and it did not crash. I have tried using a UPS and a load conditioner and neither have completely stopped the crashing. The UPS seems to extend the amount of time the PC runs until it crashes, even though it never switches to backup battery power, but it's not long enough to be stable.
Giant Purple Snorklewacker replied with this:
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:
In reply to RexSeven:
It's not dropping the voltage. The sump is a big inductive load and it's phase shifting the line. You need a big capacitor on that circuit or an isolation transformer.
GPS and everyone else, would an isolation transformer like this Tripp-Lite work? Are there capacitors that can just be plugged into a wall socket, then plug in the PC? Or are either of these something an electrician must install?
Get extension cords for the sump and dehumidifier and move them to other circuits. Would be your easiest option.
What type of UPS is it? If its the type that runs off the battery full time it should have eliminated the issue.
In reply to Kenny_McCormic:
It's a battery backup UPS (http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BE750G). Using the UPS monitoring software I am seeing the input voltage sag from 120-121V down to 114-117V when one or both of the devices runs. The UPS battery will not activate until the voltage goes below 96V.
You want a double conversion online ups. It converts the incoming AC power to DC and then passes the DC power to an inverter to generate AC power. Your current ups passes the AC straight through.
just out of curiosity, is your Power Supply up to the task? While 114v is low, it is not -that- low. If your PS is marginal in being able to supply power to your PC.. then it will cause problems when the voltage drops.
As for the power cord idea.. if you are only using the PC an hour or so at a time.. how about using a good gage cord to access power from a different room?
In reply to mad_machine:
That's my thought, most power supplies now are auto ranging 100-240 volts 50-60hz to run in Japan (100 volts 50-60hz).
Agreed. I'd be surprised if a 6 volt drop from nominal would put down a system unless the power supply was already marginal in some way.
The power supply is a brand new 700W unit. I think at most I've used 400W at any given time, but that's with the CPU and graphics card overclocked and undergoing a stress test. I don't want to RMA it, but my PC is pretty much an expensive paperweight at this point anyways so I can wait...
I found a program called WhoCrashed that will give me the crash dump files. I'm hoping that will shed some more light.
Update: It was the power supply, at least in part. I went to Micro Center and got a new PSU of a different model. When plugged into the UPS the PC will now last about 5 hours before my stability test program says it encounters a hardware fault. The PC is not crashing this time, at least. It only goes about 10-20 minutes on the line conditioner so I will be returning that. As for the original PSU I sent e-mails to the manufacturer and have received no response yet. Way to keep a customer happy...
Try un-overclocking the stuff too. I bet if you do that with a UPS, you'll be OK.
I have some RAM in my gaming PC right now that wouldn't run stable at its specified maximum frequency, technically I had to underclock it...I even tried bumping the voltage up at the max frequency.
