Two Power Supplies Died On Me

[35Pete]

Cooler Master died. Went to CompUSA, didn't have another so I got an 800 watt BFG. Plugged it in.....Boot disk error. Put in the 650 watt (the old one)..again., working fine.

Hmmm. Perhaps I have a low impedance point somewhere on the board and I am sucking current out of the supply like crazy? Time to ohm things out.

But why does the 650 keep working? Why did the Cooler Master work for a day then die? Fatigue? Gonna bring this one to the bench at work today.

Been doing electronics for years. Can't rule this out either. Sometimes shit happens and you get two duds in a row.

Any ideas?

[Merc]

If the 65-0 works then the board is OK. The Coolermaster died, no surprise there but the BFG is a question mark. It is certainly powerful enough to run your system and not a bad unit. Why it would give you a boot disk error is beyond me. Plug the BFG 24 pin and 4 pin in and boot the system up with a probe in a Molex to see what your 12v is.

[35Pete]

If the 65-0 works then the board is OK. The Coolermaster died, no surprise there but the BFG is a question mark. It is certainly powerful enough to run your system and not a bad unit. Why it would give you a boot disk error is beyond me. Plug the BFG 24 pin and 4 pin in and boot the system up with a probe in a Molex to see what your 12v is.

Trying to get a Hall Effect Sensor to test the current flow through the rails. I STRONGLY suspect a rail overload and deregulation of the +12V supply. The 650 has multiple Molex rails, more than the other supplies so it can distribute the current burden better than the single molex rails of the two supplies that plain flat out would not cooperate. I think I have a peripheral (hard drive?) that is defective and sucking a ton of current.

Those fans on the 650 are +12V. And fans need a threshold to spin. Not enough juice would do just that.

[Merc]

I can only suggest a barebones test. Strip it down to the minimums and then plug one piece of gear in at a time. When the BFG crashes you have your culprit. If at barebones the BFG still refuses to work I would give 9.9 to 10 odds that the PSU is bad.

[two4trippn]

I've had similar luck with a memory chip getting fried. Board would post and install but then within a day OS would hose. It then proceeded not to post. Switch PSU and it worked for 2 days and same thing. Traced it to a bad stick of ram, don't know if it was from a surge or not. Kingston RMAed it and things were fine again.

[35Pete]

I can only suggest a barebones test. Strip it down to the minimums and then plug one piece of gear in at a time. When the BFG crashes you have your culprit. If at barebones the BFG still refuses to work I would give 9.9 to 10 odds that the PSU is bad.

Root caused. Excessive current to the environmental controller. The 800 watt supply is working just fine now.

Also upgraded sound card tonight. X-Fi Fatality card added.

Used a Hall Effect Sensor that I snuck out from work. The controller was drawing an incredible 17 amps!

It's supposed to draw .8 amps. Me thinks a tantalum filter cap on the device supply line is faulty. Lucky I didn't have a fire.

[treydawg]

nice find pete. those caps they use on these ics are crap.

[35Pete]

nice find pete. those caps they use on these ics are crap.

Thanks bro. How's your rig running?

[treydawg]

Not bad, my bluescreen problem seems to have gone away. Hopefully it won't be coming back anytime soon. How do you like Vista?

[Merc]

Root caused. Excessive current to the environmental controller. The 800 watt supply is working just fine now.

Also upgraded sound card tonight. X-Fi Fatality card added.

Used a Hall Effect Sensor that I snuck out from work. The controller was drawing an incredible 17 amps!

It's supposed to draw .8 amps. Me thinks a tantalum filter cap on the device supply line is faulty. Lucky I didn't have a fire.


So the mobo was bad Pete?