AX 1200 problem

[PErpixel]

Hello, I'll try to make this a short story and would love to get some feedback.

 

I bought an AX1200 a while ago in 2011 to power an i7 920 system with triple SLI GTX 580. I was not into overclocking but the computer was watercooled on everything and ran pretty well.

 

Moving forward in early 2012 I upgraded toward my current setup first with a i7 3930k and a rampage extreme iv motherboard and still using that same PSU. At pretty much the same time I request and RMA on the PSU based on a very annoying noise coming for it and this RMA was granted and I received a new PSU real quick.

 

Now here is the part I don't remember too well. When I got the Rampage IV, I was really getting even more into water cooling and overclocking. I was really disappointed to find out that even small change to my OC on my board would cause the system to crash right away (that was early 2012). I pretty much gave up on OC at the time because I thought my cpu was just bad and couldn't find enough time to play with the setting anymore. I never looked at the PSU since it could power my pc just fine at default setting and even with 3 GTX 580... I'm pretty sure I did this before the RMA so I think I can rule out the PSU directly. the other thing I tested was getting a new set of memory but with the same results.

 

One important detail here. When doing my RMA I didnt send back the old cables because it was all setup in my PC and didnt want to waste time. I was returning it for noise after all. The new PSU I got was super quite so problem solved. I sent back the old PSU with the new cables back to Corsair.

 

Fast forward to last week now. I get a GTX 980 install it and for some reason decide to try OC again. Same result I had before with the system crashing right away even with the safe presets at low OC. Then I noticed the voltage are pretty low.

 

12v is 11.904

5v is 4.040

3.3v is 3.120

 

For sure that cant be good right? So I start unplugging stuff to see if it make a difference and after a reboot it did infact increase a bit where I could get 12v 4.9v and 3.2v. Still not where I want them to be but better. Try to OC again but still no luck.

 

At that point I was pretty sure my PSU couldnt deliver enough to the CPU. I toke out my old HX750 and palce that in my system. First boot, go in the bios. Pick a crazy OC profile at 4.8ghz, save, restart and behold my system POST just fine and boot to Windows... Ran cpu burner for a couple hours and its ROCK stable.

 

I feel like a sucker for not checkign that before because I pretty much spent a ton of money on the setup and didnt OC it for 2 years.

 

The end.

 

 

Now, unless I get new PSU cables there is no way I can tell if its the PSU or the cables. Why would the system run fine at stock speed but just a small increase of voltage requirement on the CPU would make it fail. I have the 8pin and the 4pin 12v plugged in on top of that. Thats a lot of juice going to the CPU. It could even power 3 GTX 580 under heavy gaming loads! Sent a support ticket but they are asking me for my invoice so I guess im out of luck there since I dont have it anymore.

[jonnyguru]

 

12v is 11.904

5v is 4.040

3.3v is 3.120

 

 

How are you getting these readings? With a DMM with +/- 1% accuracy?

 

Now, unless I get new PSU cables there is no way I can tell if its the PSU or the cables.

 

I don't think it's the cables. But I doubt it's the PSU either. Then again, the TX works, so I'm a bit perplexed myself.

[PErpixel]

The readings are from the BIOS so yeah not great and doesn't cover everything.

 

And yeah, using a different PSU fix everything. Would is be possible my wall outlet give trouble to the AX1200? It really doesn't make much sense but my system is stable for over 24 hours now at 4.8ghz.... Its a big jump from barely stable at 4.2 to a careless setup at 4.8.

 

I got an RMA number now but if anyone come up with a suggestion to try before I send the PSU, let me know. I'll probably try some more stuff this weekend like plugging it somewhere else in my home.