Fried PSU?

[calgarychris]

I've been running a FreeNAS box using an AMD-350M motherboard, 8GB ram and 4x 2 TB in RaidZ1. The box has run relatively flawlessly for 4 years but was at 94% capacity and it was long past time to upgrade. I have bought a new rig, as per the recommendations in the Hardware section - Supermicro m/b, 32GB of ram and 6x4 TB in RaidZ2.

I started transferring via NFS share and seemed to be getting about 63MB/s so I figured the transfer would run for a while. I came back 5 hours later and the AMD machine had powered itself off. When I try to power it up, I can hear the coil whine (I always had) and I get a blue flicker (from the LEDs on the fan) and then nothing. No post, no fans, nothing but a quick flicker. The PSU in the old box is a Corsair CX-430. I'm thinking that after 4+ years of 24/7 service on a bronze class psu today's demands were too much? I just can't figure out why I'd get even the flicker.

While I'm annoyed, I haven't lost anything crucial that I can't retrieve and the new rig has much better components (Seasonic) but it would be nice to get the machine back up and running to pull the data off.

In the above scenario, is it likely the PSU? The motherboard? Is there a way to test whether it's the PSU or motherboard (or if in fact the former has destroyed the latter?)

Thanks

 

[DifferentStrokes]

I wonder if @jgreco will jump in here with a little PSU 101?

 

[Bidule0hm]

Probably the PSU, yep. I have a CX-500 on a desktop and I wouldn't recommend it for server use (at least because of crappy capacitors...) :)

 

[Jailer]

If it was PSU you would get nothing. I'd look to some other hardware failure besides PSU.

A bad motherboard you will usually get all fans powered up and nothing else, IE: no POST.

 

[cyberjock]

If it was PSU you would get nothing. I'd look to some other hardware failure besides PSU.

A bad motherboard you will usually get all fans powered up and nothing else, IE: no POST.

Not necessarily true. If the PSU comes on, but cannot supply a stable voltage, it may power back off after the time required time has passed for the PSU to be 'at-voltage'. On power-on there's so many milliseconds given to allow the PSU to "come up to voltage and be stable". Some boards will power off if one or more voltages are out of spec.

 

[calgarychris]

Yeah, I was thinking maybe something was shot in the PSU and it can't supply stable power - it doesn't come close to booting, it just flashes the led and shuts off. While I suppose it could be anything, it's just weird that it'd be the motherboard - I know the AMD is passively cooled and such, but it just strikes me as strange that it'd poo itself without some sort of event that involved the PSU. And both machines are currently plugged into the same UPS, so they're likely getting reasonably stable power.

Anyways, I'll order a Seasonic and gods be good, it'll be okay. Hopefully we can tag this post later as another for the "don't buy crappy power supplies". Four years ago I don't remember seeing that post.

 

[jgreco]

I wonder if @jgreco will jump in here with a little PSU 101?

I don't have a lot to say about this; it seems likely that could easily be related to a bad PSU. I'm used to a certain amount of "PC grade stuff just fails sometimes" so my angle on it would be to pop in a different PSU and see. An AMD 350 and four drives should not have been taxing to that power supply, but it is possible that the load was actually too little and that was taxing the supply in a different way. The MTBF rating on many PSU's is "100K hours" or ">100K hours" which only works out to about 11 years.

Unfortunately the Corsair's warranty is only three years, while the Seasonic G is out there at 5 years. That, and the ~$20 price differential, suggests to me that the Corsair isn't likely to be quite as good. This isn't an endorsement of the Seasonic G - it's just a PSU that many forum regulars seem to really like, and I've seen nothing negative about it. I don't buy too many non-server PSU's, and the last PSU for an ATX I bought was the Rosewill SilentNight 500 - $139, 80Plus Platinum, 7 year warranty ... to my mind, that means that they're pretty confident they won't be needing to fix it

If it was PSU you would get nothing. I'd look to some other hardware failure besides PSU.

A bad motherboard you will usually get all fans powered up and nothing else, IE: no POST.

If it was PSU, you might get "*", where "*" expands to one of many different sorts of badness. I've got a box in the shop right now that was flickering the LED's on the front of the unit. 5V is totally hosed, component failure in the PSU.

Yeah, I was thinking maybe something was shot in the PSU and it can't supply stable power - it doesn't come close to booting, it just flashes the led and shuts off. While I suppose it could be anything, it's just weird that it'd be the motherboard - I know the AMD is passively cooled and such, but it just strikes me as strange that it'd poo itself without some sort of event that involved the PSU. And both machines are currently plugged into the same UPS, so they're likely getting reasonably stable power.

Anyways, I'll order a Seasonic and gods be good, it'll be okay. Hopefully we can tag this post later as another for the "don't buy crappy power supplies". Four years ago I don't remember seeing that post.

Yeah, drop a line and let us know what you find.

 

[calgarychris]

Confirmed, PSU is dead. All rails failed (although the 12v briefly showed some life for a second or so) according to my local repair shop's testing equipment. New supply is ordered, I'll report back on whether there was any collateral damage.

In the meantime, file this one under "Don't buy crappy power supplies" and "make sure you have backups" :-/

Thanks all for the feedback

 

[jgreco]

We've all got our fingers crossed for you.

 

[maglin]

I'm going to say this as we all have been there. We see recommendations and think "I don't need that. I'll get this other part that is 10-30% cheaper. That will never happen to me." This is usually along with "Well I'm just using this system for testing and I don't care if it's stable." Before you know it you are actually not just using it for testing and it's part of your (in this case) storage solution. Then when that cheap hardware comes full circle you are only to blame and you don't make that mistake in the future. Funny thing is I see people that post almost verbatim "I'm not using ECC ram on an old Pentium CPU and my system has been running for 2 years. You don't need that stuff." Guess what. Something doesn't break until it does. And it is that time when you realize you have to rethink your equipment.

Now I'm not directing this at the OP as more so a general of how humans are. Those that are not in the server admin field don't see the difference between service life of server/enterprise grade equipment vs. consumer grade equipment. Hell even workstations. I love to see everyone using 1 of at most 3 different systems to kept maintenance to a minimum as well as driver repositories and entire disk images. This is why I read the recommendations and followed them. I am using some older used PSU's but they are triple redundant so I'm not to worried about one failing in the next few years. I think the Seasonic G-450 is the PSU recommended the most around here. They also have a Gold and Platinum series that is recommended past those. I'm pulling that you can just replace the PSU and have your pool still in tact.

Even did some Looking for you on Newegg.
SeaSonic 400W Platnium $115
SeaSonic 350W Bronze $45
SeaSonic 350W Gold $57
SeaSonic 450W Gold $65

 

[Ericloewe]

SeaSonic 400W Platnium $115

Excellent model, but requires good external airflow, since it's fanless.

SeaSonic 350W Bronze $45

Meh, Bronze units are really not worth it these days.

SeaSonic 350W Gold $57

Probably a good unit, but needs an adapter for standard ATX size. Also, "fully modular" is sleazy marketing here. All cables are removable, but they're also all part of a single cable tree.

SeaSonic 450W Gold $65

Looks like an OEM G-450, but it's hard to tell without a teardown.

 

[calgarychris]

Update:

New Seasonic G series arrived and installed. Realised when I flicked the switch that there is definitely little to no coil whine compared to the last unit. Powered up just fine, all systems appear go and transfers have resumed. I contemplated babying the machine and not flogging it, but if it's going to fail, it might as well be within warranty! So, good news it would appear!

I get the comment on people disregarding recommendations, but times change. When I built the machine, the Asus 350 *was* a highly recommended build (I don't remember seeing anything on psu's), 4 years later it needs to be Supermicro. Hindsight is 20/20 and in 4-5 years time, who knows, people may be slagging the Seasonics that are being recommended now. I do know that I try to balance recommendations with reality - I am not running a server farm or even an enterprise or SME business, so I have to limit the expenditures or risk WAF fallout. Not making excuses, nor am I getting defensive, I'm just a realist. :)

Anyway, it's all good - I don't know that I'd rush out to buy another Corsair, but to be fair it did work flawlessly for 4 years. Just bloody unfortunate that it crapped out during the migration, but that's Murphy's Law. Thanks for all the good juju guys, I'm sure it helped! :)

 

[Ericloewe]

Corsair CX units tend to not be very durable, unfortunately.

 

[maglin]

I'm sorry as I don't have a clue on the state of FreeNAS 4 years ago or recommended HW then. I wasn't pointing at you just thinking out loud. Glad all is well. Hell 10 years ago everyone was getting Antec PSUs. Now they are garbage in comparison.

Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

 

[calgarychris]

I'm sorry as I don't have a clue on the state of FreeNAS 4 years ago or recommended HW then. I wasn't pointing at you just thinking out loud. Glad all is well. Hell 10 years ago everyone was getting Antec PSUs. Now they are garbage in comparison.

Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

Hey no worries :) Here's hoping that the new unit is better!