Maximus V Extreme surge protection triggering

[fuguchimo]

Hey guys!

I have an issue with my MVE motherboard. (or might be my PSU, not sure yet)

system specs: ASUS Maximus V Extreme, Intel i7 3770K, 8GB(2x4GB) Corsair Dominator Platinum (1866mhz), ASUS GTX680 DC2T. Nothing is OCed, even the memory is running at 1333mhz. Corsair AX1200 PSU (I know its oversized "a bit", I'm aiming for SLI later)
OS: Win7 Ultimate x64

My problem is that my pc occasionally powers down all of a sudden, and when it comes back on a few seconds later I get the message:
"Power supply surges detected during the previous power on.
ASUS Anti-Surge was triggered to protect system from unstable power supply unit!"

This happens during games sometimes but usually just web browsing not even during watching 1080p+ streams or playing flash games or anything that would cause even a slight load on this system. It happened once browsing facebook.....

I've set up Aida to monitor and log voltages, but I havent find anything interesting in the logs. (Aida might have just missed it since the whole system just shuts down in the blink of an eye and it didn't have time to log or something)

As I remember there was a time when I got a message from the Ai Suite that one of the voltages +3.3 +5 or +12 is higher than is should be. Can't remember which one (might be +3.3 but not entirely sure) and how much higher it was but I've seen it only once and even then the system went on just fine and by the time I got to the Ai Suite voltage monitor everything was back at normal. (This was the time I set up the Aida voltage monitoring)

The problem is that I can't reproduce the issue, it just happens once in a while.
I've tried stress testing with the latest 3D Mark yesterday with the Fire Strike test on extreme setting looped. It went for 2 hrs and nothing happened, so I guess its not related to system load.
Does anyone have any idea what might be causing the issue or how to find out for sure what is causing it exactly?

Oh and one other thing: The system should be surge protected from the power outlet by this: http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=pf8vnt3-gr
Also last time's logs:
http://ghost.uw.hu/2013-03-02_07-33-05_stat.htm
http://ghost.uw.hu/2013-03-02_07-33-05_log.htm

Any help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks guys. Even for just reading it... I know its long, but I wanted to give all the details.

[Chino]

Welcome to the ROG forums, fuguchimo.

Have you tried connecting the whole system directly to the wall outlet without using the surge protector? Try that first and see if the problem still persists.

On a sidenote, what BIOS are you using?

[fuguchimo]

Hi Chino!

Chino wrote:
Have you tried connecting the whole system directly to the wall outlet without using the surge protector? Try that first and see if the problem still persists.

No, I haven't. I'll give it a try, there's nothing to lose I guess.
But the test period won't be short since the issue occurs maybe once a week or it might take even two weeks.
I'll keep my eyes on the forum though to see if anyone has any ideas or had the same issue.

Chino wrote:
On a sidenote, what BIOS are you using?

Latest version, 1604.

[Chino]

Keep me updated.

[phlebiac]

if your system powers down all of a sudden this could be a possible memory problem ... try running memtest86+ for at least 2 runs without errors ... to be sure i'd let it run for at least 4 to 6 runs without errors ... believe me this time is well spent because if you continue looking for the problem elsewhere when in fact the memory is causing your problems you'll want to throw everything out of the window ...

i had kinda like the same problem with like brand new hardware (see signature) right from the start ... the first memtest didn't result in errors so i kept re-installing windows for like 10 days and trying i don't know what and then i did a memtest86+ again and it resulted in one memory stick (i have 4 8gb sticks) causing the problems ...

in fact in my case i could play like rage for hours with nothing happening, no reboot, no bluescreen, nothing ... i had my reboots only when doing something or in most cases nothing on the desktop ...

and as a sideeffect i had the asus surge protection message when the system rebooted ...

and all my problems were gone when i took out the faulty memory stick (in fact i had my system then run with only 2 sticks resulting in 16 gb instead of 32 gb) and have not had problems since ... after rma-ing the faulty memory kit i am back at 4 x 8 gb and everything is fine

also, if you don't do any overclocking you might want to disable pll overvoltage setting ... as far as i've read this can also trigger the asus surge protection when the computer reboots all of a sudden ... not sure though ...

btw i am running my system now with a eaton 3s 700 surge protection/power down protection (don't know the english term for it) ... well it not only protects against power surges but also if the power is down it allows a few minutes to put the system in hibernate mode

[HiVizMan]

The indicators are certainly pointing to PSU as a cause.

However I would strongly suggest that you remove AIsuite if possible as that bit of software can be the cause of many of these kinds of errors.

[fuguchimo]

Thanks guys!
I'll definitely try the memtest, I've already uninstalled AI Suite.
The most frustrating thing is that I can't deliberately reproduce the problem so it's kind of hard to test the possible solutions. 😞

Phlebiac: About the pll overvoltage, it should be set to auto since almost everything in the bios is set to auto. OC featues, voltage control, memory timings, these kinds of things should be on auto atm, I'll definitely check that out though. Just to make sure.

UPDATE
Memtest ran 4 times, completed without a single error each time.
Guess I'll just have to be patient to see if the direct wall outlet connection or the AI Suite uninstall solved it.

[phlebiac]

if you have everything at auto you can disable pll overvoltage as it's only meant to be used with overclocking

if i were you knowing what i know from my ram experience i'd run memtest another 4 times 🙂

uninstalling ai suite is just half the job of getting rid of it ... there's some clean tool that removes some services that still are running after an ai suite uninstall

[fuguchimo]

I though everything was at auto, but the ai oc tuner was set to manual (every unlocked settings were on auto though so I don't think it made much difference) now it is set to auto as well, and it will remain auto until I can figure out the cause of the problem, so any instability caused by the oc won't interfere with the results.
And since the system is powerful enough for everything as it is its not really a problem atm.
I have a question though. How did u know the pll overvoltage was on? As far as I can see the CPU PLL voltage is still 1.8V.

I guess some memtesting won't hurt while I'm sleeping. 7-8 hrs should be convincing enough. 🙂

AI Suite should be completely removed now by some "unofficial" Ai Suite cleaner tool.


Last night I was too tired to start memtesting, memtest marathon coming up tonight!

Ok, now I'm pretty sure the Memory sticks are fine. Ran memtest 10 times last night (6.5 hrs) no errors....

[fuguchimo]

In case you're wondering, no sudden power-downs so far.
So its either the Ai OC Tuner set back to auto, the direct wall power outlet connection, or the Ai Suite uninstall solved the problem, or I was just lucky so far.