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I might be upgrading sooner than expected

It looks like I might be upgrading my home desktop workstation sooner than I wanted to. That system was put together December of 2014 and has:

  • AMD A8-5600K APU
  • Gigabyte  F2A85XM-D3H
  • 16GB GSkill DDR3 1866MHz RAM
  • 2GB NVidia GeForce GTX 650 TI Boost video card (currently a 1GB Radeon HD 6670 for testing)
  • 500GB Samsung 860 SSD (Xubuntu Linux)
  • 1TB WD Blue Drive (Windows 10)
  • Corsair 430 Watt PSU
The system has been relatively stable over the years but has recently started to develop a few issues:

When recording audio in Xubuntu the audio is stuttering. This may be due to a Pulseaudio update since I don't have the issue in Windows 10 (and I do have the issue with multiple audio sources - web cam, microphone, and in several recording programs: audacity, obs studio).

More concerning the system suddenly reboots in the middle of playing Diablo III. I suspect the power supply might be to fault, but if it's not this might mean more expensive purchases. I wanted to hold off to buy a Ryzen-based system, but this would involve buying:

  • a new CPU
  • a new motherboard
  • new RAM
  • a new PSU (unless I test the PSU and it tests fine)
  • new Windows 10 license
Hopefully the issue is just the power supply. I temporarily removed the 2GB GTX 650 Ti Boost video card thinking that maybe it was at fault - I have had video issues in the past when trying to run dual monitors with this card, but I also experienced rebooting with the 1GB Radeon HD 6670.

I borrowed this card from work to test and see if I still ran into the issue. The first couple of days I didn't run into the issue, but then tonight I had the same problem. I picked the HD 6670 for a couple of purposes, one of which was to try AMD Dual Graphics (Crossfire between the APU and HD 6670). It was an interesting experiment but I can say I really noticed any spectacular performance improvement and certainly not over the GTX 650 TI Boost.

If the issue is the motherboard I might end up replacing it with a motherboard from work (certainly cheaper than buying a Ryzen system) but alas I can't buy a Windows license there, so I'll still be on the hook buying a new Windows license, or at least using Windows 10 with the nag to buy a license.

I already tested the 1TB hard drive with Crystal Disk and the SMART data all reads good. The last possibility is a thermal event, but usually this shows in Event Viewer and all I saw was a kernel reboot event. Tomorrow I'll return the Radeon card and borrow the PSU tester.

Fingers crossed that it's the power supply, but I'm going to start pricing out a Ryzen system - maybe an 1800X.

Comments

  1. Charles29 July 2019 at 09:44

    I tested the power supply and fortunately it's good. Unfortunately this means the rebooting issue lies either with the processor, motherboard, or Windows 10. At this point I can't blame Diablo III since I also experienced a reboot loading CPU-Z, leading me to suspect the A8-5600K APU. I have a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO on the CPU so I doubt the issue is reheating (I checked the system in the BIOS and temps seemed normal for a couple of minutes).

    I know a lot of people love the Hyper 212 EVO, but I have an old model which uses a scissor-like mounting mechanism that's a bit of a PITA to implement. I might try just cleaning the board and CPU. At the moment the system is behaving well enough to continue using. I'm not using the Windows partition much at the moment (completed all the seasonal achievements for DIII so the season is effectively done for me).

    ReplyDelete

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