3 quick power cuts, now problems

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scarpa1

Enthusiast
So Ive just had some power cuts, not just me local one, PC was running and now things aren't looking good.

First off when I restarted PC I had what looked like a blue screen coming up saying something about PC needs repair, windows something, seemed to have an option to press 4 of the F buttons, but then the power went again. It then went again, back up now but PC started with 3 beeps I think, then went off, repeated same process again and couple of times and now is running but I have no display and can't do anything.
I have one green light on motherboard which I dont think is normally there.

Any ideas?

X570 strix MB
5900x CPU
32gb 3600mhz Ram
3080 ASUS strix OC

Its custom watercooled.

​

 
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SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
scarpa1 said:
Yes, a Hulker P33U-uk

Was off Amazon so no idea if its OK, reviews seemed good
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From the seller notes on amazon, it’s not CE rated for the European market and doesn’t seem to have a proper protection circuit.

You’re plugging in a 3 - £4000 piece of equipment into a shady unrated extension. I would HIGHLY recommend investing in some proper surge protection with a fully resettable circuit. A half decent one will cost around £30 and come with insurance on the products that are connecting to it. Belkin do some good ones.

As it’s custom cooled it’s going to be a pain to troubleshoot without returning for RMA as it’s not so easy to just remove components.

I’d wait for someone like @Scott to give some advice, I think he has more experience with custom kits.
 
S

scarpa1

Enthusiast
SpyderTracks said:
From the seller notes on amazon, it’s not CE rated for the European market and doesn’t seem to have a proper protection circuit.

You’re plugging in a 3 - £4000 piece of equipment into a shady unrated extension. I would HIGHLY recommend investing in some proper surge protection with a fully resettable circuit. A half decent one will cost around £30 and come with insurance on the products that are connecting to it. Belkin do some good ones.

As it’s custom cooled it’s going to be a pain to troubleshoot without returning for RMA as it’s not so easy to just remove components.

I’d wait for someone like @Scott to give some advice, I think he has more experience with custom kits.
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Ive managed to sort it possibly, had to just turn it off on the case power switch, couldnt leave it running all night and day, unplugged everything from PC, left it, went for a drink, a stiff one, came back plugged it back in with just the monitor and keyboard, and its booted up fine.
Should I check anything to make sure its all OK?

The power surge cable has a ROHS Compliant label on box, some of the questions answered in the reviews aren't correct. Not sure where you mean in the sellers notes?
Should be fine with the ROHS compliant label though shouldnt it?
 
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SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
scarpa1 said:
Ive managed to sort it possibly, had to just turn it off on the case power switch, couldnt leave it running all night and day, unplugged everything from PC, left it, went for a drink, a stiff one, came back plugged it back in with just the monitor and keyboard, and its booted up fine.
Should I check anything to make sure its all OK?

The power surge cable has a ROHS Compliant label on box, some of the questions answered in the reviews aren't correct. Not sure where you mean in the sellers notes?
Should be fine with the ROHS compliant label though shouldnt it?
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Oh, thank god for that! Well done! Sorry, that was definitely me panicking while coming downstairs for a glass of water in the middle of the night, wasn’t particularly helpful!

I would still recommend upgrading the surge protector. After looking though it appears Belkin no longer do the range I was thinking about.

There is APC who are well known in business for surge protection and UPS systems, they have a decent entry level extension that isn’t too expensive.

This is the guarantee that expressly covers your kit that’s connected up to £50,000 (look under equipment protection policy)


Here’s a link to the product on Curry’s business:


APC are very reliable and established, they don’t just put that as a sales tactic, they will back it up also. It’s also a lifetime warranty on the product.

Other places have them as well although curry’s do seem to be cheaper.

I know at it’s heart it’s just a PC, but it’s a very nice PC of premium parts, I’d want it well covered.
 
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SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Now it’s back up, just to be safe open up cmd as admin and run “sfc /scannow” which will correct any windows database errors that may have resulted from the bad shutdown.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
I would not bother spending money on a surge protector - get a UPS. They cost a little more but they prevent any damage at all to your PC during power flicks or power outages - because they keep it running. Not only do you not damage your PC, you don't lose anything you were working on either. Mine has paid for itself in loss of worry (and loss of data) several times, most recently during some pretty bad thunderstorms a few days ago when the power flicked several times here. If you've got expensive kit it deserves a UPS in my view. :)
 
S

scarpa1

Enthusiast
ubuysa said:
I would not bother spending money on a surge protector - get a UPS. They cost a little more but they prevent any damage at all to your PC during power flicks or power outages - because they keep it running. Not only do you not damage your PC, you don't lose anything you were working on either. Mine has paid for itself in loss of worry (and loss of data) several times, most recently during some pretty bad thunderstorms a few days ago when the power flicked several times here. If you've got expensive kit it deserves a UPS in my view. :)
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Will take a look thanks.
Could you post a link of something you recommend so I get the right thing, I either get something up I don't understand or the delivery service :LOL:
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
UPS is always a nice to have. A good surge protector will protect all the hardware but unfortunately not the software. An untimely hard crash can lose your entire drive unfortunately. That's worst case of course, which wouldn't be the end of the world.

The experience you have had is fairly typical of a powercut shutdown. You have a lot of memory remnants left throughout the entire system after a shutdown, these are normally cleared out (like a cache) during a controlled shutdown but a hard kill can leave some unwanted actions in place. When you turn it back on, these instructions are potentially called and will throw up errors..... think of getting caught in a turnstile halfway during a power outage and then someone blindly trying to get in as soon as the power comes back on.... without giving you time to exit.

Depending on the leftover power in the capacitors will extend the time that these remnants exist. There may even be times where they are held simply from the standby state power on the motherboard.

Anytime in the future where you get a powercut, properly kill the power to everything for a good 10 minutes or so and then try a reboot. It should be less problematic.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
scarpa1 said:
Will take a look thanks.
Could you post a link of something you recommend so I get the right thing, I either get something up I don't understand or the delivery service 😆
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I bought mine here in Crete, but in the UK APC are a very well known name. See https://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/categories/power/uninterruptible-power-supply-ups-/computer-and-peripheral/back-ups/N-1nzwthz?No=20&Nrpp={recordsPerPage}.

Things to look for are a 'line interactive' rather than a 'standby' type. The latter uses a switch to switch to battery power, the former is always on battery and the charging circuits just keep it topped up - there is thus no switch delay at all. Standby models are generally cheaper.

The power of a UPS is usually indicated in VA or kVA and it can be hard to figure out how big a UPS you need. A lot depends on whether you want to UPS to run the PC (and monitor) for some time after a power failure or whether you just want it to hold up for the time it takes you to do a graceful shutdown. You also have to decide what other devices you want the UPS to power.

As a rough example, I started out some years ago with a 750VA UPS that would hold up my PC and monitor for about 30 mins max (when the battery was new) so it was good for power flicks and for short outages. I've since upgraded that to a 1.5kVA model. That runs my PC, monitor, external backup HDD and the wireless router, it will run those for at least an hour (I've tested that) on the new battery.

Another useful feature to look for is a USB connection to your PC. With this you can monitor the status of the UPS and battery from the PC, more importantly you can configure the PC to auto shutdown when the power has been off for a specified period of time (mine auto shuts down if the power is off for 20 minutes) so a power outage at night doesn't cause problems when the UPS battery runs flat!

No UPS battery lasts for ever, about 3 years is typical. You can replace the battery by yourself, it generally involves just unscrewing the case and swapping out the battery. The batteries can generally be obtained from the same places you buy the UPS and they are usually specific to the model of UPS you have, so you have to buy the right one. The battery usually costs more than half the price of a new UPS, that's why I upgraded when my 750VA battery died.
 
Martinr36

Martinr36

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
ubuysa said:
I bought mine here in Crete, but in the UK APC are a very well known name. See https://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/categories/power/uninterruptible-power-supply-ups-/computer-and-peripheral/back-ups/N-1nzwthz?No=20&Nrpp={recordsPerPage}.

Things to look for are a 'line interactive' rather than a 'standby' type. The latter uses a switch to switch to battery power, the former is always on battery and the charging circuits just keep it topped up - there is thus no switch delay at all. Standby models are generally cheaper.

The power of a UPS is usually indicated in VA or kVA and it can be hard to figure out how big a UPS you need. A lot depends on whether you want to UPS to run the PC (and monitor) for some time after a power failure or whether you just want it to hold up for the time it takes you to do a graceful shutdown. You also have to decide what other devices you want the UPS to power.

As a rough example, I started out some years ago with a 750VA UPS that would hold up my PC and monitor for about 30 mins max (when the battery was new) so it was good for power flicks and for short outages. I've since upgraded that to a 1.5kVA model. That runs my PC, monitor, external backup HDD and the wireless router, it will run those for at least an hour (I've tested that) on the new battery.

Another useful feature to look for is a USB connection to your PC. With this you can monitor the status of the UPS and battery from the PC, more importantly you can configure the PC to auto shutdown when the power has been off for a specified period of time (mine auto shuts down if the power is off for 20 minutes) so a power outage at night doesn't cause problems when the UPS battery runs flat!

No UPS battery lasts for ever, about 3 years is typical. You can replace the battery by yourself, it generally involves just unscrewing the case and swapping out the battery. The batteries can generally be obtained from the same places you buy the UPS and they are usually specific to the model of UPS you have, so you have to buy the right one. The battery usually costs more than half the price of a new UPS, that's why I upgraded when my 750VA battery died.
Click to expand...
I had a browse around out of interest after reading your earlier comment and noticed that these days some of the APC units don't have replaceable batteries, so maybe something for folk to check when they are looking
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Martinr36 said:
I had a browse around out of interest after reading your earlier comment and noticed that these days some of the APC units don't have replaceable batteries, so maybe something for folk to check when they are looking
Click to expand...
I wasn't aware of that, thanks. It is something to bear in mind as you say. :)
 
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