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Z690-G system fails every 3 nights

spatula75
Level 7
Consolidating some commentary to this thread.

For about the last month my Z690-G system has become unreliable; the typical failure mode is that I get up in the morning and find that at some point in the night, the machine has stopped responding, and the typical time of day that it has stopped responding will be 4-5 AM. When this happens, all USB devices with LED lights are turned off, and the only thing lit anywhere is the power LED.

I *am* able to hold the power button down for 5 seconds to get the system powered off, and then if I push it again, it will immediately power back on.

This latest time I decided to pop the side of the case off and take a look: all the fans had also stopped, all three chassis fans and both CPU fans.

I've done all the usual song and dance of unplugging all the external hardware except the keyboard & mouse, going back to a very basic Windows installation, ruling out every software possibility I can think of, etc. I've run a RAM tester for 16 hours with no issues, beaten the heck out of the CPU with Cinebench and Prime95, and these tests have found no problems.

I kind of suspect now that it has to be either the power supply (a 1000W Seasonic Prime PX-1000) or the motherboard. I can't imagine why it takes 3 nights for the trouble to reveal itself, but that's the behavior.

Any other ideas?
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12 REPLIES 12

adrianpavee
Level 7
I'm afraid I can only offer suggestions like in the other thread... Any chance you can test with a different PSU? Something you can loan from a friend or a friendly vendor? Can't really understand why the fans are shutting off as well but I suspect your theory is correct and that it's PSU related. Or possibly... Well I'm not sure since I don't know much about power delivery but perhaps the voltage you're getting from the socket is "dirty?" Maybe try a voltage regulator?

adrianpavee wrote:
I'm afraid I can only offer suggestions like in the other thread... Any chance you can test with a different PSU? Something you can loan from a friend or a friendly vendor? Can't really understand why the fans are shutting off as well but I suspect your theory is correct and that it's PSU related. Or possibly... Well I'm not sure since I don't know much about power delivery but perhaps the voltage you're getting from the socket is "dirty?" Maybe try a voltage regulator?


I appreciate the suggestions; I've got a replacement power supply and motherboard on the way. I'm mostly suspicious of the motherboard; I think if it were the power supply, it would be giving me trouble turning back on and wouldn't require holding the power button to turn off. One way or another, I should know something further in a day or so.

ahfoo
Level 13
Bro, do you OC your system? Any open running software still operate prior to this error happening? Maybe you can provide here the detail of your system spec for fellow member to identifies your issue.

ahfoo wrote:
Bro, do you OC your system? Any open running software still operate prior to this error happening? Maybe you can provide here the detail of your system spec for fellow member to identifies your issue.


No, I don't OC, and for the most part I used BIOS defaults. The main change I make is to use Intel's defaults for the CPU rather than the Asus optimization, because stability is more important than speed in my case.

This is a Z690-G board with 64GB of Samsung 4800 RAM, a pair of 2TB Samsung NVMe SSDs in a RAID1 configuration, using on-board graphics only, running Windows 11 Pro. The power supply is a 1000-watt Seasonic PX-1000.

Today I was actually using the machine when the fault occurred, which is a first.

Totally without warning of any kind, I heard the relay click and the system switched off. A moment later I heard the relay click back on, the fans ran for a moment, and then the relay clicked off again. Then the system was shut down except for the power LED.

This would be the same relay click one hears when shutting down windows when the board powers off, the same relay click one hears on occasion when the BIOS is updating and the system powers off and back on again at the end.

I'm unsure of whether this relay is inside the power supply or on the motherboard, but how well I can hear it implies motherboard vs a relay inside a PSU case.

The behavior seems to suggest the motherboard is requesting that the power be shut off, for whatever reason. Just as well I'll be replacing it today.

I hope you keep the thread updated man, I'm curious as well to know if it was a mobo problem, or something else.

adrianpavee wrote:
I hope you keep the thread updated man, I'm curious as well to know if it was a mobo problem, or something else.


Sadly, we'll never know the reason now. I replaced the motherboard with one from a different manufacturer, using all the same hardware otherwise, and the problem went away. I RMAed the board with Asus, but the US Postal Service damaged it in shipping, somehow managing to crush the motherboard box inside the shipping box, breaking off the corner of the motherboard, so now it's an insurance claim.

The fact that problems went away by switching the motherboard while keeping all the other components the same tells me it was certainly a defective motherboard, but the nature of the defect will now never be known by us or by Asus, unfortunately.

spatula75 wrote:
The fact that problems went away by switching the motherboard while keeping all the other components the same tells me it was certainly a defective motherboard


Sadly that's not enough for Asus. My board does the same. Runs stable on every stress test, but freezes every few days and/or USB turns off unless I disable PCIE NPM. Asus service found no issue and blamed other components. They're deaf whenever I back myself up with threads like this. Meanwhile I've built PC for a friend and tried his parts on that board - still freezes. But that doesn't matter cause Asus service doesn't know how to diagnose it properly. I'm on this since 10th of march, basicly debugged it myself and I'm giving them a board that can possibly help in same future cases, right? But why would they give a damn about such thing as customer support or quality of their service.

RAM sticks on QVL not fully supported, bios update breaking stability, not to mention my case. Clearly this isn't going well.

DragDay7 wrote:
But that doesn't matter cause Asus service doesn't know how to diagnose it properly. I'm on this since 10th of march, basicly debugged it myself and I'm giving them a board that can possibly help in same future cases, right? But why would they give a damn about such thing as customer support or quality of their service.


They most likely just plug it into a test bench, run a cursory set of tests on it for a few minutes, find everything is working, and shrug their shoulders.

To be completely fair, it is VERY difficult to diagnose problems that take multiple days to manifest; however when you tell them ahead of time how long it's going to take before a problem appears, this is something they should have taken into consideration and kept the system going, waiting long enough for it to happen.

Unfortunately for me I now have to prove to the postal service that the motherboard was damaged in transit to get the insurance claim paid out, and they're unshockingly throwing up obstacles there too. Pro-tip: if you ever need to do this, make sure you get the recipient to send the contents back to you, including the box if you can, because the postal service may demand to see the damage themselves. I'm glad I chose the "reject and return" option instead of "reject and dispose" because if it had been the latter, my claim would simply be rejected at this point.