What's wrong with my pfSense box?

[Ericloewe]

Small update, everyone: I've started troubleshooting this thing.

Since there's still a day left to log guesses, I'll refrain from sharing details, for now. I'll just say that I have a plan for how to proceed and expect to get to the bottom of this in the near future.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

This same thing just happened to my sons computer with about the same specs. It is behaving the very same way yours is. Loose motherboard power connector was the issue. How in the world that happened I don't know. I noticed the power connector was not quite snapped. I forced it down HARD to make it snap with that little hook. Once again, 3.1 Ghz of screaming mediocrity.

 

[Ericloewe]

This same thing just happened to my sons computer with about the same specs. It is behaving the very same way yours is. Loose motherboard power connector was the issue. How in the world that happened I don't know. I noticed the power connector was not quite snapped. I forced it down HARD to make it snap with that little hook. Once again, 3.1 Ghz of screaming mediocrity.

When I first assembled it, after I returned home from returning the first, apparently defective graphics card, it would do pretty much what it's doing now. I'd previously removed the CPU power cable, for easier access to the CPU cooler (it *is* an El-Cheapo chassis with the PSU on the top (yuck), tight clearances and, back then, an El-Cheapo cooler master PSU that didn't even have active PFC, much less modular cabling), which took me quite a while to figure out (I only fully understood those things August last year, after 5 separate computers and countless reseats) - I'd completely forgotten about the power connector in the meantime.

To this day, I wonder if the first graphics card wasn't defective after all...

 

[Ericloewe]

Ok, now that this is closed, here are the possibilities put forward:

• Cyberjock: Bad PSU
• Jailer: Motherboard
• Anodos: Generic haunting, possibly by Swedish Chef/Frank Oz

And here's the current status:

I've excluded the following possibilities:

• Bad RAM (known-good Corsair DIMM doesn't work, tried all DIMM slots)
• Some random component wreaking havoc (Graphics card, hard drive and the three NICs - tried an alternate graphics card)
• Corrupted CMOS (reset BIOS, removed battery, etc)
• Completely fubared PSU (voltages are ok, but I guess ripple might not be)
• Power cables reseated

I did notice something odd when first checking the motherboard power cable - moving the bundle of cables that contains it immediately caused the motherboard to lose power. This leads me to believe something is wrong with the PSU, and I'll be checking that next.
Should the known-good PSU not solve the problem, I'll try swapping the CPU. If that doesn't work, I'll declare the motherboard (which, by the way, is an Asus P5QL/EPU) dead.

I also made sure the case's piezo speaker wasn't bust - I had one lying around (my server's case came with one, but Supermicro X10 boards have one on board, though they still have the header for an external one). Still nothing. No graphics output throughout the whole process.

 

[Ericloewe]

The problem has been isolated:

It was the #!?%$/(%"!$*` PSU! A barely year-old Corsair CX-M 430.

Off I go to RMA it. Probably won't ever put the replacement into production, but it would be nice to have a spare around to check these things.

Jailer and Anodos: Good guesses. May I suggest one of you be Daisy and the other Peach?

 

[gpsguy]

You know you should have bought a Seasonic in the first place.

 

[Ericloewe]

You know you should have bought a Seasonic in the first place. :)

In retrospect, definitely. But the corsair was supposed to be a major upgrade to something safe and minimally efficient (the power factor on the old one was messing with the circuit breaker for the office).
I'd also been running the essentially identical CX 500 (non-modular) on my old WHS 2011 server, without any issues, plus a sister CX-M 600 doing a similar job as the CX-M 430 in the office desktop (old PSU was an el-cheapo local brand, though not as bad as the Cooler Master from the router/repurposed original WHS v1 server).

If I repair this one, I'll definitely get a Seasonic G-450 and put the Corsair on a shelf.

 

[cyberjock]

I've got 3 Corsair PSUs (one of them runs my main FreeNAS server) and I feel very confident in the PSU. It had the lowest ripple ever recorded for a PSU when I bought it from Johnny Guru. :) That had me sold.

That being said, things go bad, manufacturers make mistakes during construction, etc. Even the best brands have a 1-2% failure rate requiring an RMA. :(

 

[Ericloewe]

I've got 3 Corsair PSUs (one of them runs my main FreeNAS server) and I feel very confident in the PSU. It had the lowest ripple ever recorded for a PSU when I bought it from Johnny Guru. :) That had me sold.

That being said, things go bad, manufacturers make mistakes during construction, etc. Even the best brands have a 1-2% failure rate requiring an RMA. :(

I have 5 :p The three CXs plus an AX850 and an AX760 (though the AXs are Seasonics through and through, except for the 760's modular cables, which are standardized across Corsair's new lineup).

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I have not done research, but as far as my two 760 Corsair units, I am impressed.

As far as putting the refurbished on the shelf. I would have no issue shoving it back into a pfsense or workstation. Power supplies are very basic circuits. Unless Corsair is trying to pull a Kingston, a repaired unit should be fine.

 

[Ericloewe]

I have not done research, but as far as my two 760 Corsair units, I am impressed.

As far as putting the refurbished on the shelf. I would have no issue shoving it back into a pfsense or workstation. Power supplies are very basic circuits. Unless Corsair is trying to pull a Kingston, a repaired unit should be fine.

It's actually a bit more complicated: My ISP does IPTV, which means the router needs proper setup if we want TV (and phone service, but we use POTS due to the alarm system). This setup can be somewhat finicky, but Asus' routers simplify it a lot, so I have one of the access points in Router mode since the pfSense box died.

Additionally, since this house predates modern cabling standards (by two years or so ), it's nearly impossible to run any cabling, so the router needs to be in the living room, with a single Cat. 5E cable running to the office. This means the old pfSense server isn't really appropriate, due to volume and noise. So my options would be double-NATing and firewalling (yuck), build a C2558/2758-based system or use an Asus router.

For the second case, a Seasonic G-450 would be the most likely choice.
In any case, the Corsair sits on a shelf.