Blur Busters Forums

Posted: **05 Jul 2022, 20:36**

Hey everyone- so I've been troubleshooting inconsistent PC performance & chasing that rare ghost similar to many of you.

Today, I just realized something. About an hour ago, my power went off for a brief second, I don't know if it was a "brownout" or some other electrical issue. Losing power for a few seconds isn't a regular thing at my home, but it has happened before (usually 2-3x max in a year). But, whenever it had happened before, my whole house would lose power.

This time, it was only the area my PC is located in. My PC is on the ground floor (pretty much the center of the house, between the kitchen and living room). The PC went out along with the ceiling light right above the desk. But the other rooms nearby (kitchen and living room) didn't lose power.

The weird part is, I could clearly hear my Air-conditioning/Heating unit in the basement shutoff and power back on during this brief outage. The unit isn't located directly below my PC, but it definitely lost power at the same time. I guess the outlet I plug my PC too is on the same "circuit"?

I don't have the slightest clue about home electrical circuits, so I have no idea which different zones share power.

Has anybody heard of this issue before? Could having my PC potentially sharing power with the home AC/Heating unit be an issue?

I'd like to test my PC in a different room to see if there's a difference. But I'd prefer not moving my setup at the moment.

For now, I'm looking to just purchase a decent extension cable or power strip that has an extra-long cord to plug into the closest room (about 15 feet away). Are there power strips that are like this?

Posted: **06 Jul 2022, 02:13**

Tryin with the extension cable before calling an electrician to start moving around wires in your panel is smart. That said, I too, suspected that the AC might be an issue when its on the same circuit as the PC. So I pulled another cable from the panel using empty in-wall tubing and created another electricity socket under my desk. The whole thing costed me about $200, and it did absolutely nothing lol. I tried to plug the PC alone on it, plug the monitor alone on it, plug the modem alone on it, plug only the monitor and the modem, only modem and PC. Pretty much every different combination you can think of in the span of 2 weeks.

I'm still not saying that it is a 100% not the reason, what I'm saying is that I've done it and it yielded 0 benefit. Good luck mate!

Posted: **06 Jul 2022, 02:55**

Thatweirdinputlag wrote: ↑
06 Jul 2022, 02:13
Tryin with the extension cable before calling an electrician to start moving around wires in your panel is smart. That said, I too, suspected that the AC might be an issue when its on the same circuit as the PC. So I pulled another cable from the panel using empty in-wall tubing and created another electricity socket under my desk. The whole thing costed me about $200, and it did absolutely nothing lol. I tried to plug the PC alone on it, plug the monitor alone on it, plug the modem alone on it, plug only the monitor and the modem, only modem and PC. Pretty much every different combination you can think of in the span of 2 weeks.

I'm still not saying that it is a 100% not the reason, what I'm saying is that I've done it and it yielded 0 benefit. Good luck mate!

Thanks!!

Will try purchasing a 25ft cord powerstrip on Amazon and see if it does anything. Should be $30-40, and could always use it for something else, I guess.

I had some electrical work done on my house like 10 years ago by a shady contractor. A relative recommended him, and he renovated multiple rooms, including the electrical work for a very cheap total price. But he was pretty sloppy and didn't care much about standards (considering he didn't care at all about permits, etc) back then. I wouldn't be surprised if he messed up something with our houses circuits.

EDIT:

Trying to find a decently priced, but still reliable/safe power strip with a 25 Feet cord.

Found these models so far. What do you guys think?

https://www.amazon.com/DEWENWILS-6-Outl ... op?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09TK ... SZM7&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Prote ... r=8-4&th=1#

Posted: **06 Jul 2022, 15:43**

Shade7 wrote: ↑
05 Jul 2022, 20:36
Hey everyone- so I've been troubleshooting inconsistent PC performance & chasing that rare ghost similar to many of you.

Turning on/off a major load (appliance) can affect the electricity going to your computer, either as an improvement-behavior (appliance absorbs interference) or worsen-behavior (appliance injects interference).

The other thing is due to Ohm's Law, the voltage of your wiring of your home can drop when more power is going to the loads in the house -- like how incandescent lights often dimmed when you turned on a major load like a drying machine, a large pump, or a large heater -- especially with inferior undergauged wires in the homes of some countries of our forum visitors.

Most power supplies will be brownout-tolerant, but many cheap power supplies can start generating bigger interference fields at different voltages (including the brownout voltage occuring when a heater is turned on, e.g. 120V drops to 110V or 100V).

Many homes don't have a brownout problem when you turn on the heater, so test an incandescent bulb (since many good LED bulbs will auto-compensate a brownout by drawing more amps to compensate for lower current, to keep the same light wattage) -- does the incandescent bulb flicker badly or dim badly when you turn on the heater? That could be a clue. If not, then interference is occuring in a different form (e.g. electrical noise from the heater's fan).

There's many things for Murphy's Law to go wrong here, and this stuff is the hardest stuff to diagnose of any computer problem.
These problems exist, but it's pretty much "under 1% of population" kind of stuff, though worse in some countries and confluence of factors more likely to happen concurrently (inferior electrical networks + inferior home wiring + heater that also generates interference + etc) producing more EMI that overwhelms a cheap power supplys' defenses. (And if the interference is *bad* enough -- and it can be in some countries -- like 300 volt feedback spikes caused by a defective inductance load creating major AC-sinewave distortions -- then it can possibly even push inteference through even a good SeaSonic to the motherboard).

It is dangerous, however, to make assumptions that it is the heater, because heaters are usually a resistive load that are not major interference sources -- but the voltage/brownout can trigger issues in cheap inverters, cheap PSUs, etc -- and other components in a heater (old dust-filled fan in electric motor generating tiny internal sparks on its motor brushes, creating sparkgap radiofrequency emissions that inject interference to nearby circuit boards).

Nontheless, heaters have been culprits in the dominoe-effect in injecting interference. Sometimes it's as rube goldberg as a brownout creating a voltage that that causes the PSU (or inverter or other voltage-converting device) to generate more interference, that somehow hits one of the components, dominoeing to ECC latencies in one unknown wire or circuit trace inside the computer. Almost impossible to trace many of these "odd" EMI lag issues as it's very needle-in-a-haystack.

Remedies
- Try a different heater
- Try moving heater to a power outlet far away from PC (or on a different power phase)
- Try a higher quality power supply in computer
- Try power conditioning of various forms (UPS, or power conditioner, etc).

Given sufficient money, it's just easier to skip troubleshooting the precision cause, and just shotgun all the above concurrently to max your chances of solving a suspected heater-related interference issue.

Posted: **06 Jul 2022, 17:30**

Chief Blur Buster wrote: ↑
06 Jul 2022, 15:43

Shade7 wrote: ↑
05 Jul 2022, 20:36
Hey everyone- so I've been troubleshooting inconsistent PC performance & chasing that rare ghost similar to many of you.
Turning on/off a major load (appliance) can affect the electricity going to your computer, either as an improvement-behavior (appliance absorbs interference) or worsen-behavior (appliance injects interference).

The other thing is due to Ohm's Law, the voltage of your wiring of your home can drop when more power is going to the loads in the house -- like how incandescent lights often dimmed when you turned on a major load like a drying machine, a large pump, or a large heater -- especially with inferior undergauged wires in the homes of some countries of our forum visitors.

Most power supplies will be brownout-tolerant, but many cheap power supplies can start generating bigger interference fields at different voltages (including the brownout voltage occuring when a heater is turned on, e.g. 120V drops to 110V or 100V).

Many homes don't have a brownout problem when you turn on the heater, so test an incandescent bulb (since many good LED bulbs will auto-compensate a brownout by drawing more amps to compensate for lower current, to keep the same light wattage) -- does the incandescent bulb flicker badly or dim badly when you turn on the heater? That could be a clue. If not, then interference is occuring in a different form (e.g. electrical noise from the heater's fan).

There's many things for Murphy's Law to go wrong here, and this stuff is the hardest stuff to diagnose of any computer problem.
These problems exist, but it's pretty much "under 1% of population" kind of stuff, though worse in some countries and confluence of factors more likely to happen concurrently (inferior electrical networks + inferior home wiring + heater that also generates interference + etc) producing more EMI that overwhelms a cheap power supplys' defenses. (And if the interference is *bad* enough -- and it can be in some countries -- like 300 volt feedback spikes caused by a defective inductance load creating major AC-sinewave distortions -- then it can possibly even push inteference through even a good SeaSonic to the motherboard).

It is dangerous, however, to make assumptions that it is the heater, because heaters are usually a resistive load that are not major interference sources -- but the voltage/brownout can trigger issues in cheap inverters, cheap PSUs, etc -- and other components in a heater (old dust-filled fan in electric motor generating tiny internal sparks on its motor brushes, creating sparkgap radiofrequency emissions that inject interference to nearby circuit boards).

Nontheless, heaters have been culprits in the dominoe-effect in injecting interference. Sometimes it's as rube goldberg as a brownout creating a voltage that that causes the PSU (or inverter or other voltage-converting device) to generate more interference, that somehow hits one of the components, dominoeing to ECC latencies in one unknown wire or circuit trace inside the computer. Almost impossible to trace many of these "odd" EMI lag issues as it's very needle-in-a-haystack.

Remedies
- Try a different heater
- Try moving heater to a power outlet far away from PC (or on a different power phase)
- Try a higher quality power supply in computer
- Try power conditioning of various forms (UPS, or power conditioner, etc).

Given sufficient money, it's just easier to skip troubleshooting the precision cause, and just shotgun all the above concurrently to max your chances of solving a suspected heater-related interference issue.

Thank you for the writeup Chief!

This is good to know. I will definitely test with an Incandescent bulb. I think I have replaced all with LEDs at the moment. Still, I feel there are times when rooms "appear" dimmer or significantly brighter.

I don't think it would be possible to move the heater. Definitely easier to move my PC setup to a different room.

I'm hoping to see if it's my whole houses power that is being affected or just the "zone" that my PC is currently plugged into, and the appliances that fall within it. What are your thoughts on trying an extra-long power strip (25ft) to try connecting my setup to another room's outlet. I'd prefer testing this way rather than moving my whole setup there.

My PSU is a Corsair RM850. Do you think I should try replacing it?

https://www.newegg.com/corsair-rm850-cp ... 6817139281

Any recommendations for a decently priced UPS. Not sure where to start. I've read on this forum that certain units wouldn't suffice in cleaning the power, and some of the higher end one's look way out of budget.

Posted: **05 Aug 2022, 21:03**

Received my UPS today (trying to see if my lag issue is related to electricity), and have been trying it out with my PC, Monitor, & Router.

This is the UPS I purchased:

https://www.costco.com/cyberpower-1500v ... 27623.html

The input voltage on the display is fluctuating between 107-114v. I'm located in the U.S. Are these values normal? Some people on discord commented that these values might be on the low side.

Do you think these values could cause any issues?

The UPS says it's outputting the same voltage as whatever the input value is.

@Chief

Posted: **06 Aug 2022, 01:20**

I can confirm this. I bought a portable ac unit a while ago and have noticed that when the ac kicks in there’s a brief moment in my home where things not even on the same circuit will quickly flicker. Mainly noticeable on the tv’s in the home. When the ac fans are running it’s fine, but when the ac radiator turns on is when this happens. A sudden quick load I assumed.

Also at times tvs in my home will drop signal for 2-3 minutes intermittently throughout the day regardless of antenna positioning, funny thing is it is only consistently happening on certain channels therefore certain frequencies.

Posted: **08 Aug 2022, 16:23**

Wow- saw this afternoon on my UPS display that the input voltage from the wall outlet was 102v. Isn't this too low?

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Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?

Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?

Re: Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?

Re: Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?

Re: Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?

Re: Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?

Re: Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?

Re: Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?

Re: Can having your PC on same circuit as AC/Heating cause issues?