A failing psu?

[Alexguitar]

For the past few months I've been experiencing 'random' crashes. From what I can tell they appear more often now. Now about the issue. I got a no signal error on my monitor, in certain games the sound will loop, in some it will play a song that run in the game and stop when it finished( no game sounds tho). Also I'm pretty sure the game is not responding ( or the pc died, not sure) It is very annoying since I need to restart the pc over and over again. Usually happens within the range of an half hour of gameplay. The games I play are not very demanding and the temperatures don't get too high (usually no heat error while rebooting). Games I play and I know for sure they crash my pc:
-Team Fortress 2
-Minecraft( the tekkit pack to be exact)
-MW3
-Killing Floor
-L4D 1&2
-Dungeon Defenders
-Diablo 3 (during the beta)

Not sure about other games, because I don't own many.


I've tried many things already: update all my drivers, also tried the 275.0 Nvidia Driver to see if an older one would fix that, blowing out all dust out of the pc, re-applied thermal grease on the CPU(did that at some point, not because I thought it would fix the issue) , removed my CD/DVD drive 2 HDDs, leaving only my ssd to see if the PSU was overloading (which apparently seems to conflict with the theory I'm mentioning below :/ ), removed one RAM stick, also tried swapping them around. I also run Prime 95 and Furmark separately for an hour a few times, didn't get any errors or visual distortions. Updated the BIOS, reseated my graphics card, tried a different pci-e slot, ran a few virus scans.
Those methods didn't help much, apparently.

Also I want to add that it crashes during windows experience index. And this is the part that got my brain working.
During the process of double checking everything while writing this I have noticed to following:
If I underclocked either my CPU down to 1.2 Ghz ( using a program that comes with my MB called EPU engine using the max power saving preset)** I was able to complete the windows test, or by lowering my clock speed and memory speed on my GPU resulting with the same thing. The lower clock speed I got on the gpu I got the further I was able to go through the Windows experience index test, up until the moment when it completed flawlessly.


** Software like the epu engine, and msi afterburner aren't causing the instabilities. I fully uninstalled both of them, flashed the bios and I still had that no signal thing going on, so I'm sure those programs are fine ( and the issue was occurring before I had that software installed anyway)



Taking those things into consideration I am suspecting a faulty PSU, which it's hard for me to believe since the brand seems to be one of the best around. I am not very experienced with that sort of stuff, and I have a low budget right now, so I'd like your opinion on this, before I go of changing the psu. Adding detailed specs here:


Motherboard: P55 Maximus III Formula
CPU: i5 750
GPU: asus gtx 295 (it is overclocked a little from the factory settings)
PSU: SeaSonic 650W 80+ bronze (650HT)
RAM: Dual Channel 4Gb 1333hz
Boot drive: Ocz Agility 3 60 gig SSD running sata 3gb/s (due to the mb not supporting sata 3)
HDDS: 2tb WD caviar green 7200rpm, Hitachi 500 Gb 7200rpm

Also worth mentioning the rig is about 2 years old.
Also if by any chance it is the psu, does anyone know if all seasonic products have a at least 3 year warranty(would be really great)? ( I will ask the manufacturer of the rig about this as well, but later, because there's lots of stuff going and I wont be able to do it now)



Thanks for reading all of this,
And thanks in advance =)

 

[jamesriley94]

It doesnt sound like a PSU error to me. Especially as you have a seasonic.
Try turning overclocks off.

My guess would probably be an issue with a hard drive, or more likely the OCZ SSD.
Which drives are the games and OS on? I'm guessing Windows is on the SSD and games are on the 7200rpm drive?

 

[Alexguitar]

Well about the hard drives. I use one as a dedicated steam drive. Althouh I use the ssd to run minecraft. I am still getting those crashes. I havent tried running games on the 2tb drive since I use it for media storage only. So:
ssd- windows/ boot drive
500 gig hitachi- steam games and other programs
2tb wdc green- media storage

I'll try setting the clock speeds on the gpu back to the ones nvidia's listed.

 

[jamesriley94]

Could you partition the WD Green and install windows and maybe a game, just to test? You can back up your steam games so you can install quicker

I used to have the same SSD - mine did similar kind of things before kicking the bucket :/

 

[Alexguitar]

Well I tried installing windows on either of those hdds but apparently both will not do because either of mbr limitations or due to the fact that apparently one of the disks is gpt and windows 7 wont install on there because I dont have a board running uefi.

I'll try getting another drive from somewhere or I'll come up with something else. I'll keep you up with whats happening.

 

[Alexguitar]

I just installed a dresh version of windows on the steam dirve, wich I backed up and formated. I was able to run windows expirience index as soon as I started windows, without installing drivers or anything. Then I installed the 301.42 driver, nothing else and I lost signal from the card again.
I am now back to my earlier install of windows. Looks like the issue is driver related. I'll try getting a older driver.

 

[mArTyN]

Randon resets can also be caused by a faulty graphics card (I have just gone through that myself recently) . See if you can borrow another card to try .

 

[Alexguitar]

Well I doubt I'd be able to borrow a card from a friend. Also getting a new card at this time could be hard. As a temporal 'solution' I'll underclock the gpu.
Further suggestions would be great. But for now I'll go with the fact that the gpu is defect.

Also it seems I'm able to run heaven benchmark for as long as I want, but I guess its not putting stress on a certain component on the card and therefore it wont crash, but unsure about all of this.