Is there a click sound when my tower power goes off?
Is there a click sound when my tower power goes off?
Hi, I built a system based on extensive advice from Aeacus over a year ago, namely https://forums. System Specs MSI ACE mobo RYZEN 7950X3D CPU RTX 4060 GPU Corsair DDR5 RAM Enthoo Pro case Prime TX-1600 PSU Dark Rock Pro 5 cooler Noctua A14 fans everything has been fine till now, but a recurring problem has emerged. I have been doing a lot of backups of mainly 2T magnetic drives, and also verifying the copies are correct, over several days. some backups can take more than 12 hours. so the machine has been under heavier use than normal for many days. as I am trying to migrate my storage from USB2 enclosed sata magnetic drives to USB3 drives, mostly magnetic but a few SSDs, eg 5T magnetic USB3 ones, and 4T SSDs, and some 2T and 1T SSDs. whilst one of some 490gigabytes was verifying, I went for a walk, and returned to find the PC had powered down. the lights on the Corsair ram was on. But I couldnt wake up the machine. Eventually I tried to power it off with the power switch at the top of the the Enthoo and nothing happened. so I powered it off at the mains. now what happens is sometimes it will boot like now, but at some point there is a click from the machine and the power goes, but the Corsair rainbow lights continue. Other times the power cuts out before it reaches the boot options. It is quite frustrating. I tried powering off all the USB hubs, as I have three USB3 hubs with 10 ports each, ie 30 USB3 sockets via hubs and more than 20 are in use, but at any time I might just use maybe 4 of those. the others are connected up but are powered off. I have the Sabrent 10 hubs. Items are powered off at the mains switch if mains powered, or at the hub socket switch if powered by the hub. The idea being to minimise attaching and detaching as that wears out the contacts and the hub becomes junk. and also detached the sata cables to 2 magnetic drives in the tower in case any of these was the cause of the problem. but the problem persists, I can power up sometimes like now, but at some point there is a click from inside the machine and the power goes, but the Corsair memory modules rainbow lights continue. And the power button at the top of the machine doesnt work to power off fully. I cant determine where the click is coming from.
I can't find where the noise is coming from. You might want to look at the PSU because it seems like the source of the sound. To make sure this is what we mean, what BIOS version were you running on that motherboard? You could try updating the BIOS and see if that stops the clicking. Also, maybe take out your discrete graphics card and all other extra stuff and check for a POST beep instead. I said remove those things just to be safe so they can't be making an electrical mess somewhere else.
It looks like we are meeting for a second time. The "click" is probably coming from the power supply unit (PSU). As far as I know, one reason could be that a safety feature in the PSU got triggered to shut it down properly, which causes the whole PC to lose power. It might also be that your USB hubs are drawing too much current and triggering the PSU's protections. What Lutfij suggested is definitely a good idea. Another possible cause is just a problem with the main electricity grid. Now, i don't know if you had a UPS installed to back up your build or not. But we can be sure that at first everything worked fine, right? And did this trouble start later on, or was it always there?
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends International, LLC. 1.E0, 28/03/2024 I give further hardware info below at the end of the message I'll give the info first and we consider options before I try that in case the problem can be fixed at a more outer level. I would like to try the most lightweight remedies first! this machine is dual BIOS, so I might try switching BIOSes before reflashing, but I'll see what replies on the info so far first, eg to maybe remove the GPU first. I do have a 1000 Watt Corsair PSU in my earlier PC, RM1000X, where as another option to try substituting the Seasonic with that temporarily to see if the problem is the Seasonic. The Seasonic has a 12 year warrantee. not sure what you mean by POST the problem persists even if I switch off all 3 hubs at the mains. where they are still connected to the PC via the USB cables. these are all powered hubs, ie they have their own mains supply and dont draw power from the PC. I give a link later for the specific hub I use. could the powered off hubs connected by USB cables cause a problem? ordinarily I just have 1 hub powered on, the 1st hub has the most frequently accessed items, the 3rd hub has the least frequently accessed items, so I only switch on the other hubs when I need items connected to them. this also makes it easier to disconnect a swathe of different items with one switch. the arrangement is so I can connect and disconnect items entirely with power switches, not by physically attaching or detaching cables, as the latter wears out the contacts. I use extenders also to reduce wear and tear ie hub -- extender --- extender --- item, where I only attach and detach extenders. the USB hubs are the sabrent 10 hubs, which dont draw power from the PC. namely the following which you recommended last year: Sabrent USB3 10 hub where each socket has its own power switch, and the entire unit has its own mains cable. 3rd June there was a major power cut, the first in almost 20 years, where the lights wavered and then there was a flash of light and a sound, the power supply firm said it was caused at a nearby road, not by anything I was doing! I saw their van there in the afternoon fixing it, there was no power at all for several hours. The PC was in the middle of a lengthy disk copying op when that happened, so I had to restart that all over again. but the problem emerged yesterday 8th June, where I had meanwhile done a lot of lengthy backups on Linux, many overnight, with no power loss to the machine as the shell commands were still running in the morning. the first power cutting out yesterday I was going for a walk so dont know what happened, but the subsequent ones, I didnt notice any wavering of the lights, where usually I have the lights on even in the day as the room is shielded a bit from daylight. I didnt because long ago, approx 2005 I got a UPS, but when I tried it, I could feel some buzz in the air like there was an ocean of invisible stuff being held back, and I got scared of that and never used it again. I was going to sell it on ebay but when I tested it, found it was defunct, so I had to junk it! I noticed then that the documentation said you had to use it from time to time! the build has worked since I built it, I think over a year without problem. A few times when I thought it wasnt booting, it was always that the monitor had powered off completely and I had to power it with its switch and then eg the Windows desktop would appear! ordinarily, I only need to switch the mains on for the monitor. but if I leave the computer and monitor running overnight, often I have to also press the integral power switch of the monitor. I did try that with the initial problem, but nothing happened, I tried the mouse, the keyboard, nothing. the mouse light was off also. I detached and reattached it to the USB extender and the light reappeared but wouldnt start the machine. the power switch on top of the enthoo pro wouldnt wake up the computer with single presses, and where ordinarily a prolonged press powers off the PC fully, nothing happened! I had to use the mains switch to power off. same problem with the subsequent loss of power, but unusually the corsair modules rainbow lights remain on during these problems. that's why I thought it was hibernating. so it doesnt cut all power, power continues to the corsair memory modules. the system gives the info as: OS Name Microsoft Windows 11 Pro Version 10.0.22631 Build 22631 Other OS Description Not Available OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation System Name ************ System Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. System Model MS-7D69 System Type x64-based PC System SKU To be filled by O.E.M. Processor AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D 16-Core Processor, 4201 Mhz, 16 Core(s), 32 Logical Processor(s) BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends International, LLC. 1.E0, 28/03/2024 SMBIOS Version 3.6 Embedded Controller Version 255.255 BIOS Mode UEFI BaseBoard Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. BaseBoard Product MEG X670E ACE (MS-7D69) BaseBoard Version 1.0 Platform Role Desktop Secure Boot State Off PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible Windows Directory C:\Windows System Directory C:\Windows\system32 Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume16 Locale United States Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.22621.2506"
I have a big power adapter plugged into a wall socket using a long cable. The main plug goes to the adapter, and then two more adapters stick out from there. Those second ones also go to other plugs that are connected to even more cables going all the way back to the wall. In total, I have six of these big adapters with 27 little electrical items plugged into them at different times while I am working on a project right now. Most of those 27 things are turned off most of the time because they aren't being used.
For example, what is actually connected to power right this second includes my multi-plug adapter, my monitor, my PC, one large hub with ten extra ports, my laptop, and a single USB stick that fits inside an M.2 slot on a magnetic hard drive. I am currently backing up data from the older slow drive (which uses SATA) to a newer fast drive (which is a Seagate One Touch using USB 3T technology). This backup takes about seventeen hours because it has two terabytes of data and the old drive is slower than the new one, so it gets very busy. All the other twenty-six items that are not connected right now just sit there with no power on them.
The whole point of doing this so I can keep going on my non-M.2 drives later is to use my laptop as a temporary charger while the first adapter keeps working in the background. So, could it be causing any trouble for me? It's an old multi-plug that has been sitting there connected to the PC and monitor for a long time, so I'm wondering if that specific one is too old to handle the load. Should I just swap out that very first adapter with a brand new one? And what about the adapters coming after it in line from the wall? Do they start acting bad because of all those items flowing backward from the PC's plug? It seems like every single multi-plug has its own fuse inside, so maybe the old one is just on the verge of breaking down.
Arrangement: Wall Mains Power ---> First Multi-Plug (with PC, Monitor, Hub, Laptop) ---> Second Adapter ---> Third Adapter ...
I suspect your PSU may have suffered damage when the AC mains supply failed in the street outside your home. Uncontrolled high voltage mains transients caused by arcing (as indicated by a bright light) might have zapped the MOV in your PSU or some other component (semiconductor). Apparently you're losing at least one of the main DC power rails (12V, 5V or 3.3V) so the system stops working. Perhaps your Corsair rainbow lights are fed from the auxiliary +5VSB rail which is present all the time the PSU is receiving mains power with the rear panel on/off switch set to on. The click you hear from some ATX PSUs is the "bypass relay" associated with a Thermistor (Varistor) in series with the Line input. After the initial high current switch on surge, this relay kicks in and bypasses the Varistor, to increase PSU efficiency (the volt drop across the Varistor wastes heat unnecessarily). If you have a different PSU from another PC, try substituting it before doing anything else. I'd advise uplugging all your many hubs before doing this, but top marks for using connector savers. I got through several micro-D savers each year at work costing $200+ each. A thought regarding your powered hubs. There's a vague chance the +5V supplies (from the power bricks associated with the hubs) are feeding back into the computer. This would happen if the supplies are not completely isolated (diode-ORed) inside the hub. You could check with a multimeter, but's not always easy to achieve. The next time your computer fails, try unplugging the USB connections from all external hubs and drives and see if the Corsair rainbow lights go out. You might be forcing +5V from the USB hub power supplies back into the motherboard and keeping the rainbow lights illuminated. Stranger things have happened. My personal preference is to avoid using USB hubs, so I mothballed a collection of 11 USB3 desktop hard disk drives several years ago. The 3.5" hard disks (2TB to 8TB) get too hot for my liking (up to +60°C) inside their plastic housings, with limited ventilation and no fans. If you extract the hard disks from WD Elements or Seagate housings and fit them in a desktop PC with direct fan cooling, the same drives run at +30°C to +40°C. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Shuc...ive/137646 I feel much happier with nearly all my hard disks running cool inside PCs. A typical Fractal Design R5 case has bays for eight 3.5in hard disks. I have Lian Li cases with room for twelve to sixteen 3.5in drives. Better (to my mind) than a bunch of external USB drives running near their maximum temperature limit. From 2018 onwards I've been using a couple of cheap second hand LTO4 SAS tape drives to archive files to 800GB tapes. The drives cost $100 each and some barely used tapes were $3 each. With the write-protect tab engaged, the tapes are pretty safe from accidental file deletion or Ransomware. Tapes are nowhere near as handy for fast file retrieval, but they're good for archives. A USB hard disk is at risk all the time it's connected to a PC attached to the internet. I keep a minimum of 3 copies of all important files on different systems, sometimes up to 6 copies. Tip. I use Free File Sync for such tasks. If the copy process is halted or fails, Free File Sync can be used to check the difference between two folders or complete drives and resume file copying without having to start all over again. All you need to do is Compare the contents of the two folders/drives. I place the Source folder in the left pane and the Destination folder in the right pane, click Compare, then click Synchronize. Easy. https://freefilesync.org/
I agree with what Misgar said because you have a spare power supply from a Corsair RM1000x, so swap it out to check if the problem is actually the PSU. Remember that you also need to change your modular power cables coming out of the old unit. Seasonic cables don't fit into Corsair PSUs. After you get the new PSU installed and start up without any problems, I suggest you return the Seasonic unit for a replacement under warranty. They might give you a free replacement part. Moving ahead, I recommend getting an UPS to protect your computer from power outages. If there is no electricity, the UPS keeps things running so you don't lose all your work. Otherwise, you're just risking it and then losing everything when power goes back on again. POST stands for Power-On Self Test. This is what the computer checks right away when it first gets plugged in. Before you can even touch the BIOS or start up the operating system.
many thanks for the extensive reply! I need to digest the info, before I read this I did buy a brand new 6-multiplug, with 2 USB A and 2 USB C sockets today, and put just the PC, monitor and one 10 hub on it from a different wall socket, next to the socket currently used. after maybe more than an hour in the middle of an email reply, the click happened and the power cut from the PC. I will try that again and then to try your idea of disconnecting the USB hub. its a bit of a performance to change the PSU, so there may be a delay before I get this completed! what is the reason for the power switch at the top of the enthoo not working when the power cuts out? or maybe its what you say in the following paragraph about the corsair getting its power as a backflow from the USB hub so I will test that idea when it next happens. I use the Sunguy extenders recommended by Aeacus last year: sunguy USB 3 extender because I junked so many USB 2 hubs where the contacts were worn, and eventually all USB2 sockets of my old 2010 PC were unusable! I then had to use a USB3 PCI card to get 2 USB3 sockets! Spoiler: expand for slightly off topic info about minimising wear of contacts I first learnt about this problem from a Nextbase dashcam, where I was moving the SD card to and from the PC to access the recordings. and at some point vids were becoming corrupted, eg freezing with a green screen. Then I exchanged SD cards between the 2 dashcams, one at the front of the car, one at the back, and now no problem on the affected dashcam. so realised it was the SD card, and its just the contacts wearing out. if you have a chip and pin credit card, and use chip and pin a lot, the chip becomes seriously worn out and can then stop functioning. Since 2012, cards moved to contactless, but larger payments and every now and then as security they force you to use chip and pin! so now I never remove SD cards and use the USB cable instead. With the Nextbase, I cannot keep an extender as it collides with the fixture on the window. but when it wears out, I can then use the SD card just once! I bought a 2nd hand 3D camcorder recently, and have a permanent extender to connect to a permanent extender on the 3D bluray TV recorder machine, both by Panasonic. It takes 2 x 64GB SD cards, the large format. I use the remote control also instead of the touchscreen to minimise wear and tear of the screen! Pioneer no longer make the dual 3mos 3D camcorders, which have 6 CMOS's so you get super impressive colours, many 3D camcorders use just 1 CMOS for the 6 colour components of the 2 lenses! where they split the image to one sensor, which shares red, green blue. with my new Samsung smartphone, I only use a magnetic charger, that way no physical wear of any socket. Also I transfer files to my PC wirelessly using Samsung Dex, but today since installing an update, Dex isnt functioning, and instead I transferred a photo as an email attachment! with the PC in particular I never use the BIOS flashing USB socket except to flash the BIOS because if that wears out, you cannot flash the BIOS again! would this only happen for things connected indirectly to the same wall socket? ie 1 wall socket ---- multiplug --- multiplug --- multiplug ... items, ie are the 2 wall sockets isolated from each other? this is in Britain, where I have a modern "consumer unit", where its not fuses, but where switches trip if there is a problem, and you just flick the switch back. Older houses have fuses, but I got mine modernised as by law you need the new system for new installations of kitchen electrics. "consumer unit" is probably british jargon. I will definitely try this, when it next happens. most of the time I just use the 3 M.2 drives, I only connect other drives for things like backups. I think the M.2 drives get seriously hot also. Now I noticed that if I do a major backup of say M.2 drives, the fans come on full power! so I think its when you access the drives that they really heat up. data is basically hot! right now the 17 hour backup of a 2T magnetic 3.5" sata drive (WD Blue) in a USB2 enclosure has completed, and it has gone into hibernation! I dont know if the hibernation is from the USB enclosure or the PC or the sata. I try to make backups to a different disk each time, with the backup disks powered down otherwise. these are huge backups, eg compressed could easily be 300GB, thus making 2 identical ones is very time consuming. Spoiler: expand for further about necessity of a robust backup arrangement this actually paid off recently when a 500GB Samsung SSD went completely defunct. And is where I think magnetic drives are more reliable, in my experience magnetic drives slow down before they go completely kaput, where you can salvage the stuff. but this SSD went from everything to nothing, so salvaging not possible. the USB2 enclosures not so reliable, but maybe the ones I got are low quality ones, there wasnt much choice. connected to sata it does appear, on Linux you can access a disk as if it is a file, eg /dev/sda or /dev/sdb etc, which you can read off from the Disks program. When I did this, attempts to access it, which require the sudo command, say it has 0 bytes. luckily I have a sector clone as a file of the entire drive in 2021 which has other volumes also, and a compressed archive of the main work directory from 2023, where I have only made some tiny changes since then. And I have regenerated the sector clone to a 1T T9 Samsung drive, and later will manually merge the archive with that, I need to study the timestamps to compare the 2 systems to merge them. had I not been so paranoid about backups I could have lost a lot of my own works! as regards 3 copies, what I do is archive each time to a different disk. so I have archives going back to 2006 for my work directories, which generally arent huge, as its mostly text based things, and for backups of drives, when a disk runs out of space, I delete the least recent ones of any where there are more than 2. thus I have copies on different disks, but from different points in time. eg I might have a sector clone of the system drive from May on one disk, and from April on another disk. if I attempt a repair of Windows, I make a sector clone of the entire drive via Linux, because in the old days I didnt, and at least 2 repairs got stuck, where the windows installation became unusable! luckily I never keep work on system drives, as system drives are the most used, as they are used every time you boot the machine, so they wear out first. I dont know about the newer volume formats, but with say 32 bit Windows XP, the volume format of hard drives begins at sector 0, so that sector gets worn out first! I had a Samsung drive, where the first sector was corrupted and unwritable. I think I could salvage the data, but the disk was no longer usable. thus emails, photos, text, NEVER on the system drive, I dont use those "Documents", "Pictures", "Music" etc folders that Windows supplies! Always such things to other drives, and backups to drives which are powered down most of the time. does it preserve the timestamps also?
the click happened whilst I was replying to you! as I could no longer read what he said, I removed the USB3 hub's power socket, where that new multiplug just has monitor, PC and 10 hub connected. but the rainbow lights continued, I waited many seconds, then switched off the mains to the PC and now the rainbow lights vanished. afterwards I realised maybe I need to also disconnect the USB cable to the PC, where just 1 extender is used from the PC as the hub cable is relatively long. Next power cut click I'll disconnect it at the extender and at the mains to see if the corsair rainbow lights stop. then whilst writing this, the power cut out again! and I forgot to disconnect the USB cable from hub to PC. this time I am posting from my laptop, with the PC tower booted up to windows 11 on the other table waiting for it to fault. I made a really small table for the laptop, and this laptop and mouse can handle 3 computers, so I can use the same wireless keyboard and mouse for both. one technical problem regarding this is the laptop mouse pad is worn out where clicks dont work properly, which on Linux makes it problematic to pair the mouse and keyboard. The only way out would be to use a wired mouse. Once paired, next session it remembers, but sometimes it doesnt! and it has to be re-paired. this is what I am dreading! not sure what you mean by RMA? I may contact them first before exchanging PSUs, should I volunteer the info that there was the power cut? or should I wait till they ask? I wont lie about it, but with businesses sometimes you have to be careful what you say and what you dont say, as they can use either to your disadvantage. Thus often to only give info that is requested. With government officials also its like this, you should never volunteer info, neither positive nor negative. whereas with this forum I will give all the info I can think of. if they dont replace it, I may try the house contents insurance, will the UPS protect the PSU from this kind of power cut damage? as regards the saving, the problem is if the power cut is whilst I am asleep! as I often backup disks whilst asleep! eg the last backup I did took some 17 hours! some take 8 hours, some take 3 hours. thus I may lose some unsaved work! I often start a command last thing at night, then after breakfast I check whether it completed! I can tell often also if the hard drive led is flickering that the commands havent finished! I put some echo commands in the scripts to tell where it reached if a problem, eg date > markerfile1.txt shell_command1 date >markerfile2.txt shell_command2 date >markerfile3.txt I may be able to tell from the file sizes also if a command completed. I had wrongly assumed a Seasonic would have its own shielding from this kind of problem. but it does this test for whose benefit? if the test fails, does it communicate this to the user somehow? it is presumably not for the computer's own amusement? especially with AI! 😕 this mobo does have an led with numbers which change continually during the boot, this is where the transparent door is a good idea! also where it pays to print out the manual! or to have a 2nd pc. some of my early PCs didnt have transparent sides, so if there was any signal one wouldnt know! I think this is a problem with laptops also!
Since you already assembled the whole PC on your own, replacing the PSU isn't such an ordeal as e.g installing MoBo into PC case and connecting all the needed cables to it. At current moment, we don't know exactly if the fault lies within the PSU (e.g damaged during blackout) or within your USB hubs. To rule out either of the two; 1. Disconnect ALL USB hubs from your PC. Leaving only KB/mice, monitor and power cable connected to the PC. Could be that one of your powered USB hubs is feeding power back to the MoBo, like Misgar suggested. And while you may have switched it off from the button, it may still feed some power back to the PC (on/off button doesn't work right anymore). 2. Replace the PSU with the spare PSU. IF the issue is with Seasonic TX-1600, using 2nd, known to work PSU, would instantly tell if issue remains or not. RMA = Return Merchandise Authorization Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_mer...horization It means that you initiate a warranty claim of the PSU and return the PSU to the seller/manufacturer due to the fault PSU developed during the warranty period. Well, you can describe the symptoms you're having. And you can also disclose that there was a blackout and that probably caused some lingering damage to the PSU. Though, do note that when you do not disclose that there was a blackout and instead are hoping that Seasonic would replace the PSU for you, Seasonic will put the PSU under testing to figure out why the PSU failed. In this testing, they can find out that external cause (blackout) was the reason of the PSU's failure. And once that happens, Seasonic may or may not hold up the warranty. Since after all, warranty covers PSU's own manufacturing errors, not the external causes that may damage the PSU. (Blackouts, surges, too high humidity, too high/low ambient temperature, improper usage of the PSU etc.) You need to read your insurance terms and if outside electrical damage to electronics is covered or not (like blackouts, surges due to lightning strikes etc). Yes, since this is the very job of the UPS. It really doesn't matter if you're awake or sleep when there is a blackout and PC looses power. Since even when you're awake and sitting behind the PC, you do not have the ability to keep the PC running once there is a blackout. Now, PSU can keep the PC running for a short time during blackout, namely 26.3ms but it is incredibly short time that you can't even register. 1 second = 1000 milliseconds. Human reaction time is 250 milliseconds for visual, 170 milliseconds for audio and 150 milliseconds for touch. While Seasonic TX-1600 can keep the PC running for 26.3 milliseconds. (ATX standard specifies PSU hold-up time to be at least 17 milliseconds). Now, if you would have a proper, good quality UPS. It could catch main power grid fluctuations (e.g power loss) within 2 - 4 milliseconds. Which is more than enough time for PSU to keep the PC running in the mean time, before UPS switches over to the battery backup. Well, it does have some protections, like the hold-up time, where PSU must keep the PC running during power loss. But PSU does not have AVR in it nor does it have battery for power loss. For that, there is an UPS. PSU is a device that turns AC into DC and splits it over different voltage rails (e.g: +12V, +5V, +3.3V) for PC components to use. If all ATX PSUs would protect against all electricity grid issues, there would not exist an UPS in the first place. It's own benefit, to ensure all the core components work as they should. Once you power on the PC, these steps are executed in order, before you can log in to Windows; Direct link if image doesn't load: https://laymentogeeks.wordpress.com/wp-c...8/rurr.jpg As you can see, POST is just one of the steps within the chain. Found this small slide show, where it describes nicely what POST does. Slides 2 to 7, link: https://slideplayer.com/slide/10137134/ It could, via error beeps or messages on screen. But usually, when there is critical failure, you will not see anything on the screen and PC will not boot to OS. If that happens, one of the core hardware (or all of them) have a fault: CPU, MoBo, RAM, GPU (or iGPU), PSU. These numbers/letters show what kind of POST tests PC is currently doing when initially powered on.