My computer began power cycling itself for seemingly no reason about a month ago.   The times it would occur were inconsistent.  I could narrow it down to times when the system was under a lot of stress.   Kernel compilation combined with watching a flash video would take the system down within 2 minutes.  I also noticed that the crashes weren’t always the same; sometimes I would catch a glimpse of a kernel panic when on the console.

Instability is an awful thing.  It prompted me into action quickly.  The first things that were changed out were the processor and the video card.  They were recent purchases, changes I was going to do anyway.  The issue still persisted.

At this point, I went off the path.  Every kernel or BIOS feature that could cause instability was checked.  I went though 10 different kernel setups, flashing the BIOS, and resetting the BIOS to factory defaults.  In a final attempt to convice myself that this was not an OS issue, I reproduced the problem on a live CD.

Memory can go bad at times.  I proved this was not the case by two methods, switching out DIMMs and running memtest86+.  The problem wasn’t the memory modules.

There were only two options left.  The power supply and the motherboard.  At this point, all hope of a painless fix were lost.  It was time to spend some hard earned money.

I started by replacing the power supply.  I have had power supply issues before that had caused flakiness.  When a system is under load, a poor power supply (or one with insufficient wattage) will no longer be able to power the components of the system.  I decided that getting a modular, 80+ efficiency power supply would be worth it even if it wasn’t the issue.   I am now the proud owner of an Enermax EMD625AWT power supply.

The Enermax power supply is great.  The fan doesn’t spin up unless the power usage is high, so it stays nice and quiet.  After reading a bunch of reviews on it, I am totally convinced that I made the right call on purchasing it.  However, it was not the problem.

The problem was the motherboard.  It had to be, there was nothing else.  That story is for another blog post.

There is one large issue with having a computer inside of a large, wooden box.  Where’s the power button supposed to go?  The easy solution is to run cables off of the current power switch to some other button that is placed in a more convenient location.  This approach was considered, but I didn’t like it.  I thought that remote control was the way to go with this.

Looking back, this may have been a just for fun decision.  Although, running wires and modding the computer would have been more work.  The main driver was that the computer could not easily be removed once the button was in place.  Also, the location to put button wasn’t obvious.

It is a little known fact that there are some always on power coming from the computer’s power supply.  IMon takes advantage of this and created products such as the Imon Inside.  This gives the ability to receive remote signals even when the computer is in a powered down state.  Once the motherboard’s power button is rerouted to the Imon Inside, the computer can power itself on remotely.  How cool is that?

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story.  The Imon device operates via infra red signals.  These don’t travel through 1/2″ of wood well.  My initial tests worked great when the computer was out in the open, but not when placed inside of the cabinet.

There is a solution to this problem too.  I honestly didn’t think I’d find a cooler product than the Imon, but I was happily mistaken thanks to the Next Generation Remote Control Extender. It turns out that they make an RF transmitter that poses as a AAA battery.  By replacing one of the batteries with an RF transmitter and putting the RF receiver in the cabinet by the infrared receiver, the signal was remote was now able to push commands through the cabinet.

Success was finally mine.

Materials

Imon Inside ~ $60  Purchased at Newegg
Next Generation Remote Control Extender ~ $33 Purchased at Amazon