HCHTech
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 4,212
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA - USA
I trying to remote-troubleshoot a 6-month old workstation we built for a small business customer. Ryzen 5 3400G, Asus Prime B450 MB, 16GB RAM, NVMe SSD, 350W Antec PS in a slimline case.
The symptom is random freezing, immediately preceded by the USB disconnect sound. When frozen, sometimes the mouse will still be working and only the keyboard is dead, sometimes the keyboard and mouse will both be dead. If the mouse is still alive, they can reboot the machine normally and it comes back up ok. Sometimes, when frozen, they can plug the keyboard & mouse into different USB ports and it will they will be recognized - but this doesn't always work.
Client is 60 miles away, unfortunately, so I haven't had physical access to the machine. I do have remote access, and in the one time they called me while it was still frozen, I was unable to connect remotely. After a reboot, I was able to remote in normally and found no evidence in the logs other than "the recent shutdown was unexpected" nonsense.
The client has tried swapping the keyboard and mouse to different USB ports, a new mouse & keyboard as well as a known-working mouse & keyboard from another machine. Neither one seemed to affect the problem. Sometimes it only happens a couple of times per week, sometimes it is multiple times a day.
I'm leaning towards the power supply as the culprit - there aren't a lot of choices for slimline units that I love. By my calculations, the 350W should be more than adequate, but maybe I just got a bum unit. It could also be the motherboard, I suspect.
What would get your vote as the most-likely culprit?
The symptom is random freezing, immediately preceded by the USB disconnect sound. When frozen, sometimes the mouse will still be working and only the keyboard is dead, sometimes the keyboard and mouse will both be dead. If the mouse is still alive, they can reboot the machine normally and it comes back up ok. Sometimes, when frozen, they can plug the keyboard & mouse into different USB ports and it will they will be recognized - but this doesn't always work.
Client is 60 miles away, unfortunately, so I haven't had physical access to the machine. I do have remote access, and in the one time they called me while it was still frozen, I was unable to connect remotely. After a reboot, I was able to remote in normally and found no evidence in the logs other than "the recent shutdown was unexpected" nonsense.
The client has tried swapping the keyboard and mouse to different USB ports, a new mouse & keyboard as well as a known-working mouse & keyboard from another machine. Neither one seemed to affect the problem. Sometimes it only happens a couple of times per week, sometimes it is multiple times a day.
I'm leaning towards the power supply as the culprit - there aren't a lot of choices for slimline units that I love. By my calculations, the 350W should be more than adequate, but maybe I just got a bum unit. It could also be the motherboard, I suspect.
What would get your vote as the most-likely culprit?
