Can anyone give me a general list of Power Supply failure behavior, above the obvious (no power, smoke or fire). I built the system about 2 years ago (AMD processor on a MSI motherboard, 1GB RAM). The unit and peripherals are plugged into a Belkin Surge Protected UPS.
Last night I replaced the CPU Fan as the old one had become VERY noisy (worn barrings). After about 2 hours of completely normal operation the system just shut itself off. No warning, no error beep from the board .. it just died as if the plug had been pulled from the wall. The system restarts just fine and doesnt even register an error or give me the nebulous (Windows has recovered from a serious error) message.
It did it again this morning, after being on for only an hour. I have had no other problems with peripherals or the OS. Before I start replacing the unit bit by bit, I want to know if this sounds like a failing power supply? The diagnostic tell-tails on the back the machine do not reflect anykind of Motherboard failure.
I think that the new fan may be pulling just enough to tip the balance on the already failing supply.
Thanks in advance.
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I keep air circulating in the case pretty well. Using the temp-control monitor that came with the motherboard shows the CPU temp to hover around 50 deg. and the overall unit temp not that much higher. The UPS diagnotics checked out. Also, when this happens the UPS doesn't so much as chirp which leads me to believe this isnt a power spike or irregular voltage issue.
I'll check out the links you provided. Thanks.
Well after tinkering around last night for way too long I "think" the situation is resolved. According to the power supply calculator I am well within what my supply can handle. So, I went to my local electronics/computer store looking for a PSU test adapter. You should have seen the strange looks when I asked if the carried one. Actually, Im not surprised they didn't have one.
Anyway, I reseated all the cables on the motherboard and tried the running with only the Motherboard and slowly adding peripherals back. While I was not able to replicate the scenerio, I now think there may have been a video driver conflict between my cable capture USB device and a Video Conferenceing camera also USB. Both had managed to get plugged in at the same time (I hate it when someone else uses my PC).
On Windows 98 a driver conflict such as this caused a 'blue screen' and a driver error. With only one plugged in a running I ran several apps that are memory and CPU intensive with no difficulties.
Hopefully this fixes the issue. Thanks for your input.
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by: mwnnjPosted on 2005-11-07 at 07:02:21ID: 15239218
Hi Stewie614,
some links:
http://www.clickx3.com/ima
http://repairfaq.ece.drexe
http://www.smartcomputing.
http://www.directron.com/c
http://xtronics.com/refere
power supply tester:
http://www.dansdata.com/qu
http://www.antec.com/us/pr
regarding your problem:
here is an optional psu calculator:
http://www.jscustompcs.com
the most importaint feature of a psu is the combined power ! a good psu must give output combined power more than 216Watts-this has nothing to do with the max . power output,but the comcombined power is a factor that describes the efficiency of a psu.
so i could also suggest the following scenario:
-check out the wiring twice ,regarding your motherboards manual;whether all expansion cards are well seated(RAM,GPU,PCI cards)
-check out the cpus assembling:pins are ok,compound is apllied in the right way,fan and heatsink are well seated,check out for overheating issues also.
-install the tool motherboard monitor
-disable the"Automatic Reboot After Crash",control panel->system->advanced->s
http://www.theeldergeek.co
-clean out all kind of dust in your case
-check out for bad caps on your motherboard:
www.badcaps.net
-test your ram with memtest86+
www.memtest.org
-take out the motherboard from your case and place it on a thick cardboard and thus test the machine for couple of hours,just to prevent that the mobo is shortcutting with the case
-what about the wiring in your house and the belkin ups,are you sure that everything is a OK?
-rehaps you really need a new one psu and perhaps a better cpu cooler....
Cheers!