I decided to pick up a new HDD today. I swapped it out with the old one, booted up, did the works, transferred a ghost image. Everything went great. Was in the OS, everything seemed fine. Rebooted etc.
Finally after everything was set, I shut the machine down. I then attempted to power it back on, and it didn't.. Its dead as a door nail. I opened the box up, checked everything that could possibly have been affected. HDD is intact, cables in and around are intact. "power/reset" cable is intact on front of pc and to mobo. RAM/Processor intact.
Wall outlet is fine, I tinkered with the plug at the back of the machine, plugging it in and to make sure it wasnt lose. Two times it powered back up, (black screen, but hdd's/fans going) but now, cant get it to power at all. The two times it did power on, it was spontaneous. I'd unplug, replug, it'd power (black screen). I'd then unplug, replug, no luck. After about 3 tries, it powered up again. Now it wont power at all.
The PS whistles whenever the power cable is plugged in. In my experience, the processor is one of the few items that will cause a zero power bootup. Rest usually cause POST beeps.
I've expected the PS to go out, its made consistent whining noise in the past, came and went. Frankly, im surprised its even lasted this long. What bothers me is this occurred right after a HDD install.
Does it sound like it finally went poop? Note, I replaced a HDD, I didn't add a new one. I can understand how adding ANOTHER HDD could cause a PS to fail, but not replacing.
Any input/ideas appreciated.
P.S. I just gave another plug-in attempt after letting it sit for 5-10 min. It powered up briefly, then shutdown.
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I got it to power up again (black screen ofcourse) and the PS fan is not moving. It actually has quite a bit of resistance. I have the power supply open in front of me, and as expected, pretty filthy. The air holes are all filled up, etc.
Weird timing though. Something musta triggered it to finally give in. With a HDD install, is that possible?
It would depend on how stable your PSU is(not very from what you've said) and the power consumption difference between your old hdd and your new hdd. I'd say that if your PSU was struggling to supply enough wattage and you upped the power consumption just a little bit then yes you could fry the PSU. Though Dust can quite easily short things out of enough power is available to "jump the gap" to complete the short ciruit(again increasing the power consumption).
ok im convinced the power supply is the culprit
now, its a 200Watt proprietory PS. In order to run a normal ATX PS, I need an adapter (which shouldnt be a problem to get)
Now my question is. I am running almost "double" the hardware than what the factory system came with. I have added a second HDD, a CD-RW, A FX5700LE video card, a tv-out card, usb 2.0 card, and an upgraded processor that has a fan (factory PCU didnt).
Would you suggest I upgrade to a 400watt and just get the adapter? Or is the factory 200watt sufficient?
calculate the power you need :
http://www.jscustompcs.com
congrats on having it run like that - it must be a golden PSU !
this was supplied by nobus in another thread
http://www.jscustompcs.com
I recently picked up a PC to repair. It wouldn't turn on at all. The motherboard (*cough* *Dell* *cough*) is dead, and I know this because that PC's power supply booted up another PC perfectly well. The way to make sure it's not the power supply is to see the PC not boot up. It seems that since you got your PC to turn on for a little while before it turns off again shows that everything else is fine, and the power supply can't provide enough power.
A while ago, a happy, friendly neighborhood gamer bought a GeForce FX5900XT video card for his creepy eMachines PC with a "Bestec" 300W power supply. Also, he added another 512MB of ram for a total of 1GB. The PC worked fine for about a year or so, but when he tried to overclock the video card and went overboard, the PC locked up, and it wouldn't boot up again. That same power supply works perfectly well on all PCs without a lot of drives and peripherals, but it doesn't have enought power to boot up the eMachines PC with that video card. It seems that because he added the video card and ram and then later overclocked the video card, the power supply would not power his PC anymore.
Also, I have a couple of whiny power supplies that cannot die. They run and run, and nothing bad happens. Therefore, power supply whining is not correlated with death.
Finally, because of the unsurprisingly dead motherboard in the PC that cannot at all turn on, the 300W power supply that can no longer power most PCs with a lot of components, and the lack of death after whining, I believe the power supply has finally gone.
Based on the troubleshooting that has been performed (or lack thereof), I wouldn't go buy a new power supply just yet...it could infact be a psu problem, but my thinking is it is best to confirm what is happening and take the appropriate action rather than just guessing and throwing parts at it. Think about it this way, if you go and buy a new psu, and that's not the problem, you will still have to do the exact same troubleshooting, but you will be out 50-120 dollars because you bought a part you didn't need.
For the most part it is recommended the people not open the power supplies. I have, myself, replaced fans in power supplies as radomir suggests, and it isn't that difficult, but they do say that the capacitors in power supplies can hold a charge for days after the psu has been unplugged, so you need to be very careful about what you touch inside the unit. Rather than twisting wires together, I would suggest soldering them together and covering the splice with heat shrink tubing...this will prevent it from coming undone and also prevent it from shorting out on something.
I had a lamp that turned off/on when I touched it. I think it's called a touch lamp. When I opened it because the mechanism was broken and kept turning the lamp on and off, I saw that the wires were twisted together and held in place by small caps. I ripped out the mechanism and twisted together the remaining AC cables. Now it stays on when I plug it in. Awesome. I was thinking about using the touch-on/off mechanism for a PC case to control some LED lights. Anyway, if the lamp's wires could be held together and provide 120W of 110V AC power and not need sautering for the 1A+ current, twisting wires together is perfectly fine when it comes to a .4A or so 12V DC fan. I usually put on electrical or duct tape when I twist the wires enough. Sometimes, I fasten the tape on there with cable ties. It's a truly safe way to create circuits that hasn't failed me yet. But thank you very much for your concern. I just don't like hot sauter near open power supplies.
I'm not going to argue about it, twisting the wires and taping them will work, no question about it, it's just that the right way to do it would be to use a proper connector like twisting the wires and then soldering them or a crip on connector...then covering the splice with heatshrink wrap...tape is great for temporary, but not well suited for long term use. Radomir, I'm not trying to be difficult, I guess I just like to overbuild stuff =-).
jeff
A friend of mine a while ago was holding a closed, never-before-opened, AT power supply that was plugged in. He was electrocuted because the AT power switch was not insulated. Stupid Compaqs.
Techempire,
Be careful when touching your AT power supply. Make sure the power button that goes to the front of your case from the power supply is completely insulated. On the other hand, you could just unplug the power supply.
I just remembered that I've used a bunch of those really cheap Hipro power supplies from Newegg and Chiefvalue in some of the budget systems I've built around my house and among some people who needed office PCs. For an evidently reliable brand that HP used a while ago, how much do you expect to pay? I figured Hipros would be a bit more expensive because all of mine have been reliable so far. Look at this:
http://www.newegg.com/Prod
When I got the first 2, each one was $8.99 with a $6.99 shipping & handling charge.
I have 2 extra power supplies. They are cheap to replace and my case requires custom PS3 form factor power supply. (Only applies to OEM, Shuttle and custom case size.)
Careful with the 12V connector. Check the number of pins. If you plug a 2.0 into a non 2.0 connection, you can break off components on your motherboard. 2.0 connectors have 6 extra 'pins'.
Try to find a 'quiet' power supply. Your PC will make a lot less noise.
Well, the other day I tested with a spare fan and still got nothing.
Don't worry about it. This PSU is 8 years old, and i'm surprised it didnt go sooner. I need more power anyway.
The fan noise/whining didnt start too long ago, and then it eventually stopped. Ofcourse, apparently because the fan stopped. Clearly an issue of overheating. I didnt even check the fan till after I made the thread.
Sometimes, all it takes to make an 8 year-old fan work is to pull all the dust out of the motor and oil it up a bit. Just a thought. I did it the procedure to a fan, and it is still running fine.
I strongly recommend that you look into that 360W Silverstone. It's, quiet, provides high quality & lots of power for a low price, and it's not cockroach friendly unless accessed through the fan on the bottom from inside your case.
I'd usually consider Antec and Enermax as well, but this is far too great a deal.
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by: tfjeffPosted on 2006-02-21 at 00:10:03ID: 16006655
the symptoms you describe could indeed be caused by a bad power supply. I can think of a few other things too though:
bad/malfunctioning power switch, bad power cord, a problem with your power outlet/power strip/surge protector, mis-seated or unseated connector that runs from psu to motherboard (20 pin atx connector or 24 pin btx connector AND the 4 pin P4 connector). Also, sometimes a device plugged into the power supply can cause this symptom, since you recently added the hard drive, try unplugging the hard drive from the motherboard and power supply, then try starting up again. A really easy way to find out if the power supply is working (not the most reliable way though), is to take it out of the computer, plug it into the wall, on the 20 pin atx connector there is a green colored wire with a black wire right beside it. Take a piece of wire/paperclip and jump these two leads together...the power supply fan should come on, if it does not, the power supply is not working. I've done this with standard atx power supplies, I don't recommend trying it on anything that is proprietary without further investigation. Also, even if the fan does spin up on this test, it is not a reliable indicator that the power supply is working correctly...but if the fan doesn't spin up, it is a reliable indicator that the power supply is not working (a caveat to this could possibly be the power supplies with a thermally controlled fan, I have yet to try one of these).
good luck,
jeff