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| you had an old-school power surge by jeep 10/19/2011, 7:46pm PDT | ||||
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| Modern components are hardened against the expected kind of surges machines get from the wall (in the civilized parts of the US), but the power supply can still do for the HD and vid card as it dies (even though it's super rare, at worst it's usually the mobo). I have found over a long, long time of fucking with commodity hardware that if the power supply or motherboard get fucked up, the other usually starts having problems soon enough, but I've never been able to point to one specific causal relationship. Some people still wear the static absorption wristbands while working on machines, in my experience it hasn't been necessary since around 97, but back then if you got a bit of static while you had your hands in a sun sparc or dec alpha you basically cost your company $30k worth of components. People stayed paranoid about it for a long time after. The last time I heard of a multi-component overload like that was maybe 2 years ago (caused by the hard drive!), and probably 5 years before for the prior one (power supply toasted the mobo). In the meantime I've chewed through like 4 power supplies (they just stopped working).
Anyway for anyone else: if your power supply starts making noise you gotta do a couple things, and it's important because even though the psu is the cheapest part, in modern case design it's also your primary heat exhaust like 99% of the time, so if the fan is disabled (when there's noise, it's the fan) all of your other components are running hotter and if their fans so much as pause they are maybe 5 seconds from significant damage (if the following is too complicated to remember, go right to step 3) 1. double check that it's the power supply. leave the machine on, open the side of the case, and verify it's not the cpu fan or the vid card fan, because if those are fucked you have to shut the machine off til you replace them or it will cost you way more than a fucking $30 power supply. 2. shut it off, unplug everything, take it outside, blow it out with compressed air (especially the power supply) look in the power supply real close to be sure there isn't a bug or stick or penny or something fucking it up. if it still makes noise... 3. shut the machine off, remove the power supply, take it with you to the store, buy a newer, better one with a bigger fan, maybe a few more watts, 1 extra power cable for the vid card and 1 extra for the hd. who cares how much it costs. the extra cables are so you can add and test components with it, and the more watts thing is so you can consider reusing that power supply when you build a new PC the following year. |
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Will a failing power supply destroy the rest of your system? by 09/13/2011, 6:54pm PDT  Most likely your mobo and power supply are dead. The rest is OK. NT by 09/13/2011, 8:38pm PDT Probably this NT by 09/13/2011, 9:23pm PDT Suspected as much by 09/14/2011, 5:00am PDT Connect the components one by one to a functioning computer and verify them NT by 09/14/2011, 6:51am PDT I would but... by 09/14/2011, 7:22pm PDT Not in my experience by 09/14/2011, 5:38pm PDT Re: Will a failing power supply destroy the rest of your system? by 09/15/2011, 2:55am PDT This is you then? by 09/15/2011, 3:27am PDT Yes, that was me. NT by 10/02/2011, 8:04pm PDT This is the best money I have ever spent in my life. NT by 10/18/2011, 9:44pm PDT Pointless follow up by 10/18/2011, 5:45pm PDT you had an old-school power surge by 10/19/2011, 7:46pm PDT Didn't even consider the fact that the power supply could cause a surge by 10/22/2011, 6:11am PDT |
