Insufficient power delivery to USB ports when system is under load

[TheDeadPixel]

Hello there

Specs:

Mobo: Zenith Extreme
CPU: 1920x OCed to 4Ghz
GPU: 1080ti Poseidon
External Hard Drive: 3TB Toshiba HDD
PSU: Cooler Master V1000 (1000W)

So Simply put, I have properly water cooled my system recently and OCed the CPU. The system runs quite alright running while Both CPU And GPU are running at 100% load, hovering around 65 to 70 C. But the problem is when I have my External HDD connected to back (and/or front) I/O it would do clicking sound. At first I was pretty worried that my HDD is damaged or something, but after googling it turns out insufficient power delivery is one of the reasons for clicking sounds. So I did a simple test and that is the case, and of course, the clicking sound persists if both GPU and CPU are under load. Hard Drive works fine if one or none of them are are under load. So at first I'd Blame the PSU, but then again, I highly doubt that the system is pulling more the 600W at full load. Just what to be sure if there's a BIOS setting that I'm missing or it's just the way it is?

[AS185]

I just realized that in our motherboards the information and details are rather short. This is, after all, a motherboard for experienced users.
Anyways, try enabling the XHCI hand-off feature in the USB Configuration menu inside the BIOS. Check if the U31G2_E1/U31G2_E2 option is also enabled. Save and boot into Windows. Attach the external hard drive, restart and boot into BIOS once again. Now you should have a feature in the USB Configuration menu displayed USB Mass Storage Driver Support. Enable it. Save and reboot. Try testing in Windows now, by unplugging the external device and plugging in for any strange sounds.
Hopefully, this works!

[TheDeadPixel]

AS185 wrote:
I just realized that in our motherboards the information and details are rather short. This is, after all, a motherboard for experienced users.
Anyways, try enabling the XHCI hand-off feature in the USB Configuration menu inside the BIOS. Check if the U31G2_E1/U31G2_E2 option is also enabled. Save and boot into Windows. Attach the external hard drive, restart and boot into BIOS once again. Now you should have a feature in the USB Configuration menu displayed USB Mass Storage Driver Support. Enable it. Save and reboot. Try testing in Windows now, by unplugging the external device and plugging in for any strange sounds.
Hopefully, this works!

Hey thanks for the reply, and I checked and all the options you mentioned and they were enabled, and nothing really changed.

[AS185]

Well, that's a bummer. I don't know then what could be the problem. The way I see it if the USB ports work, I guess it's alright however I guess the clicking sound could get annoying or you'll get used to it. Strange issue. The last thing to do is actually to test with a more powerful power supply unit. Your 1000 watts should be fine but who knows?

[TheDeadPixel]

AS185 wrote:
Well, that's a bummer. I don't know then what could be the problem. The way I see it if the USB ports work, I guess it's alright however I guess the clicking sound could get annoying or you'll get used to it. Strange issue. The last thing to do is actually to test with a more powerful power supply unit. Your 1000 watts should be fine but who knows?

Actually the clicking sound makes the HDD stop from reading or writing, can't even browse the files with file explorer, isn't practically not functional, even if it worked, I would worry It'd be damaged in long tun.
I don't have another PSU. I connected my HDD to a labtop, and while gaming, it functions fine.

From what I remember, the HDD worked fine when I had my CPU at stock clockspeed. So I guess, ASUS didn't really test this scenario in their QC department.

[AS185]

TheDeadPixel wrote:
Actually the clicking sound makes the HDD stop from reading or writing, can't even browse the files with file explorer, isn't practically not functional, even if it worked, I would worry It'd be damaged in long tun.
I don't have another PSU. I connected my HDD to a labtop, and while gaming, it functions fine.

From what I remember, the HDD worked fine when I had my CPU at stock clockspeed. So I guess, ASUS didn't really test this scenario in their QC department.

That I didn't know. Maybe it's your overclock then? Maybe it's causing some type of stir in the motherboard? It could be an answer to your problem.
On another note, you just reminded me that I should try checking all of my USB ports lol I did and they are all working! 😛