HCHTech
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 4,203
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA - USA
We built two identical Autodesk workstations for an architect client of ours back in April. Both were delivered with fully patched Win10 Pro and latest BIOS & drivers.
Ryzen 7 1800X
32GB RAM
512GB Samsung 970 Pro NVMe drive
Antec full tower case
Antec 750W Gold PS
Nvidia Quadro K1200 graphics card
Dual 27" monitors
Client uses Autodesk Revit 2019, and the Adobe Cloud suite, plus the normal compliment of Office & various other common software.
About a month ago, one workstation starting crashing randomly. No BSOD or other evidence in the logs, just the maddening "the previous shutdown was unexpected."
This sounded thermal to me, so when I was onsite, I made sure all of the fans were working (2x case fans, cpu and graphics card fans, PS fan). I also changed the fan curve in the BIOS to run faster sooner based on heat. I also took a look for anything obvious that we might have botched with the assembly. Didn't find anything. I also loaded the latest Nvidia driver.
It seemed better for a week, but was still crashing occasionally. Same lack of evidence in the logs.
So...I was onsite this past weekend for server maintenance, and spent more time with the problem. To my dismay, I discovered that we had mounted the PS upside down. The case has an input with a filter on the bottom, and the PS fan side draws inwards, so it is clearly meant to use outside air to cool the PS. The identical workstation without the problem had the PS mounted correctly, btw.
I re-mounted the PS in the correct orientation, even though I didn't think it was related. By having the PS draw air from inside the case and exhaust it out the back, the incorrect mounting should have acted to draw MORE warm air from inside. The effect of the incorrect mounting would have been that the PS would run hotter, not the computer. Seems to me anyway. I booted up Revit & queued a render, which proceeded until 99% done, then the computer locked up. No errors in the logs.
I also ran furmark for a while, this shot the temperature of the graphics card pretty quickly to 85 degrees celsius, but it leveled out there. I was a little uncomfortable with it at this temperature, so I stopped the run after several minutes. The machine didn't lock up, though.
Next, I decided to swap the cards between the two identical workstations to see if the problem followed the card. To my surprise, it did not. Both workstations ran their normal software load without crashing for about an hour. Next, I booted furmark on both workstations and let it cook. Both cards shot up to 85/87 degrees, but leveled off there, and ran without complaint for about 30 minutes. Ok, so I booted up Revit on both workstations and queued the identical render (The files were copied first locally to the machine so it wouldn't be pulling them over the network.) Both computers ran for the next 20 minutes simultaneously running a full-screen furmark on one monitor and rendering a drawing on the 2nd monitor. Neither computer complained a bit and both finished the render successfully.
So....apparently swapping the cards fixed the problem, but I don't know how. They were clearly NOT mounted incorrectly initially. Both were secure in the same slot on both motherboards.
I swapped the cards back and took the problem workstation back to the shop where I could do full hardware diagnostics and try to break it over the weekend. It survived a 12-hour furmark run, 12 hour memory test, no errors at all in a full PC Doctor run, set to 50 iterations.
I took it back this morning and installed it, so time will tell, but this was an odd one, that's for sure. I wish I had dismounted and remounted the card in the same workstation, that would have put a finer point on the diagnostics had it fixed the problem, but I didn't.
Ryzen 7 1800X
32GB RAM
512GB Samsung 970 Pro NVMe drive
Antec full tower case
Antec 750W Gold PS
Nvidia Quadro K1200 graphics card
Dual 27" monitors
Client uses Autodesk Revit 2019, and the Adobe Cloud suite, plus the normal compliment of Office & various other common software.
About a month ago, one workstation starting crashing randomly. No BSOD or other evidence in the logs, just the maddening "the previous shutdown was unexpected."
This sounded thermal to me, so when I was onsite, I made sure all of the fans were working (2x case fans, cpu and graphics card fans, PS fan). I also changed the fan curve in the BIOS to run faster sooner based on heat. I also took a look for anything obvious that we might have botched with the assembly. Didn't find anything. I also loaded the latest Nvidia driver.
It seemed better for a week, but was still crashing occasionally. Same lack of evidence in the logs.
So...I was onsite this past weekend for server maintenance, and spent more time with the problem. To my dismay, I discovered that we had mounted the PS upside down. The case has an input with a filter on the bottom, and the PS fan side draws inwards, so it is clearly meant to use outside air to cool the PS. The identical workstation without the problem had the PS mounted correctly, btw.
I re-mounted the PS in the correct orientation, even though I didn't think it was related. By having the PS draw air from inside the case and exhaust it out the back, the incorrect mounting should have acted to draw MORE warm air from inside. The effect of the incorrect mounting would have been that the PS would run hotter, not the computer. Seems to me anyway. I booted up Revit & queued a render, which proceeded until 99% done, then the computer locked up. No errors in the logs.
I also ran furmark for a while, this shot the temperature of the graphics card pretty quickly to 85 degrees celsius, but it leveled out there. I was a little uncomfortable with it at this temperature, so I stopped the run after several minutes. The machine didn't lock up, though.
Next, I decided to swap the cards between the two identical workstations to see if the problem followed the card. To my surprise, it did not. Both workstations ran their normal software load without crashing for about an hour. Next, I booted furmark on both workstations and let it cook. Both cards shot up to 85/87 degrees, but leveled off there, and ran without complaint for about 30 minutes. Ok, so I booted up Revit on both workstations and queued the identical render (The files were copied first locally to the machine so it wouldn't be pulling them over the network.) Both computers ran for the next 20 minutes simultaneously running a full-screen furmark on one monitor and rendering a drawing on the 2nd monitor. Neither computer complained a bit and both finished the render successfully.
So....apparently swapping the cards fixed the problem, but I don't know how. They were clearly NOT mounted incorrectly initially. Both were secure in the same slot on both motherboards.
I swapped the cards back and took the problem workstation back to the shop where I could do full hardware diagnostics and try to break it over the weekend. It survived a 12-hour furmark run, 12 hour memory test, no errors at all in a full PC Doctor run, set to 50 iterations.
I took it back this morning and installed it, so time will tell, but this was an odd one, that's for sure. I wish I had dismounted and remounted the card in the same workstation, that would have put a finer point on the diagnostics had it fixed the problem, but I didn't.
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