PSU Problems-The Story of black Friday

jonski

Right , where to start ? The following is more than a bit long winded but it is for the benefit of all those that tried to help me Yesterday .

I had Coba King 480w psu , and have had it for a while , got it for nothing originally . I never really had any confidence in it but it worked so it stayed . My last pci-e card drew it's power from the slot , but it was only a 6600 so it wasn't a problem . Last week I bought a 2nd hand 7900gs and when I installed it , after buying one of the stupid 4 pin to 6 pin ( doesn't really fit ) converters from maplins , the pc wouldn't boot . I disconnected everything except the cup and gfx card and the pc booted , then I reconnected everything one by one , each time seeing if it would boot , and it did . Everything in and all seemed to be working .

Yesterday I bought another 1gig stick of ram , to bring it up to 2.5 ( all hail the first into the BF2 map ) , stuck it in , hit the power button , was a small buzz from the psu but no boot . Disconnect the pc and brought it over to where I could have a good look into it and fiddle around . I plugged it in , hit the power button , 'BANG!' , 'big spark' , hit the kill switch on the power and sat there with my mouth open and the beginnings of tears starting to well up .

So , I disconnect everything , but this psu is fried , opened it up and there is a brown scorch mark on the inside wall , much like the one in my underpants . Now I sit in my car and have a nightmare afternoon driving around Friday traffic trying to find a replacement , even putting in a call to Savemejebus for advice , ( well what did he expect , giving me his mobile number , it's his own fault ) , he offered me the loan of a 380 watt hiper if needed , ( in fairness he is only digging himself in deeper , if I was him I would dump that phone in the dock and move on ). One of my other mates heard my tale of woe and arrived at the house with a trust 570w pro , so i stuck that in and waiting to find out what else was fried , hit the power button and .....nothing . More tears .

So , I started disconnecting everything again , but still nothing , went to my usual haunt for advice , boards/adverts , and loads chipped in with ideas and encouragement , but to no avail . I started taking out the bits one by one , cleaning them off and boxing them up . I got one last tip , from Flaccus , suggesting that I clear the cmos and see if that would do anything , took back out the cpu and fan , cleared the cmos and tried to boot , no go , my poor wife is sitting there watching me and trying to offer condolence while looking inside to see if she can see and evidence of a burn out on the board , she is convinced she touched nothing , but suddenly there is a ling on the front of the machine , I hit the start button and the fans spin to life , I start putting stuff back onto the pc and it still boots everytime , when I get to the last two items , cd-r and dvd-r drives it stops booting , I disconect them and reconnect them one by one and the pc boots . At this stage I walk away .


I come back to it later on that night after 3 hours trying to connect eircom BB in m8s house , try the pc and it boots \o/ , pick it up off the floor , connect the various items at the back , hook it up to a monitor , and it boots , check it out , read my mails and go to bed . I got up this morning , readjusted the pc and ....it won't boot . Fiddle around with the wires and it won't boot ...try the power switch one last time , and it boots , try fiddling with the wires ( seeing if it's a loose connection ) but it stays on .

So , it's on , it's working , and I have no idea why . I will probably wait till during the week and try a complete rebuild . the only thing I can think of atm is maybe a problem with the power switch itself .

Anti

This brings back memorys. Ive had this quite a few times. To me it sounds liek the board is almost dead. After the psu blow-up. The new 570W sjhould be more then enough. But when ive had this problem i could never find the problem, As the board carried on to work for years. Its one of the mysteries of life, i presume.

feylya

Same thing happened to me a while back. Was playing Prey, machine switches off. I try to switch it back on, it comes on for a split second and then nothing. In the end, I had to replace the power supply, mother board, graphics card (it blew a chip) and a hard drive

jonski

As an update to this . When I come down in the morning I have to flip the switch on a power socket before I start the pc , since Friday I have to leave the pc sit in that state for about two minutes or so , then and only then will it start .

jonski

A further update , just showing the wife this morning " now watch this , I flip the switch , hit the start button , nothing happens , now I'll walk away for a minute or two and then go back and it will start " So we are sitting , waiting and then she says , " ah , I see now , there it is starting now " ......."huh ? , that can't be" says moi , " I haven't gone back over to hit the power button yet " .


Come on then people , don't be afraid to comment

b0bsquish

call the local priest, your machines possessed :eek::eek::eek:

hopeful

jonski wrote:

just showing the wife

There's your problem right there

jonski

Just an add on to this which might explain where it all went wrong .

When I disconnected all the leads from the pc originally to install the gfx card , I missed one , my joystick from the front usb port . As I walked away with the pc I felt a 'yank' , and the joystick fell to the floor , thought no more of this until a week ago when I went to play bf2 and plug in the joystick . The front usb port was mangeld , the white cover over the pins was missing and the pins were bare and touching the metal divider between the top usb port and the bottom one . I now also notice that the two usb ports , low down at the back , that are connected by a lead to the socket near where the front ones are connected , also don't work . So I wonder is that where the short came originally ?

savemejebus

Interesting development man, has it been going ok for the past couple of weeks apart from being tempermental i mean?

jonski

Yeah , the odd reboot here and there .

btw , did I see you on a cs:s server the other day ?

savemejebus

Hmm, i guess that's ok, important thing is being up and running. Hope you do the odd backup though.

Wasnt me on the server, probably some impersonator. If it was me you'd know it as the game would start and the first kill on the screen would be me, having killed myself or something similarily bad