A Malfunctioning Power Supply Can Be An Elusive Diagnosis
The power supply of your computer is one of those components that is quite easily forgotten. While some obsess over having close to a kilowatt on tap to power their desktop and components. I always viewed it as a "gaming thing," like RAM timings, and never paid any attention to it.When I build a computer, I am quite content to buy a case with the power supply included and preinstalled. Plug the drives and motherboard in, and the power supply into an outlet, and we're up and running. This is very convenient and cost effective.
That was about as much thought as I ever gave a power supply, or wanted to. Well, my attitude has changed through my recent experience.
After my Shuttle suffered an untimely death, an upgrade was made to the Aspire X-QPack. This is a SFF case that supports a standard mATX motherboard (unlike the Shuttle that uses a propietary motherboard). The ingredients were all right for a great desktop: Athlon 64 3800+ chip, Samsung 250 GB hard drive, Windows XP Pro, 1 GB of Corsair XMS RAM, ATI 9000 All In Wonder card, and dual optical drives.
While the raw materials were right, the outcome wasn't quite right. The system would have trouble booting. It took anywhere from two to six (!) boot attempts to be up and running, and never on the first try.
I've built and rebuilt plenty of systems before, and I blaimed the usual suspect: Windows. Clearly this had to be a ccorrupted install- NOT. Despite a fresh Windows install, and hours of downloading and installing Service Packs and weekly updates, there was no difference and the booting problems continued. On the 223rd reboot of Windows, I got that sinking feeling that perhaps it was a hardware issue, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Of course I wanted to use the new rig, and I figured the problem would shake out with a little time. Surfing the internet went ok one day, but then the next it would die without any warning and require several reboots to restart. This was very annoying as my unpublished posts in Blogger disappeared at my computer's whim! I was starting to think that the desktop might be possessed, and I started thinking about arranging an exorcism.
Of course, the "River of Denial" runs deep, and I sailed on. The next issue was during a disc write, the computer died half way through. This was considerably hampering efforts at an optical drive review I've been preparing. As the expensive dual layer coasters piled up, that sinking feeling returned stronger than ever.
Finally, I was trying to transfer files from an external USB hard drive to my internal Samsung SATA drive. After around 10 gigs of data, the desktop once again did the spontaneously dying act again. This reproducible issue happened three times in a row. While the data couldn't be transferred, it hit me like a ton of bricks- the power supply just might be problem.
The Aspire X-QPack shipped with an ATX 450 Watt power supply. Unfortunately, the case is quite tight in length, and one of the optical drives is not short (an extra inch of case length would really help). However, a power supply transplant was clearly necessary for the system to be usable.
A trip to my local Microcenter for a new power supply, and one scraped knuckle later, I had shoehorned in 400 Watts of electrical goodness.
I'm happy to report that the boot process, disc burns, and hard drive transfers all go without a hitch now. I can also use Blogger without being paranoid and saving after every other line. Yes, computing life is good now. What's the moral of this story? When you've got wacky issues with your computer, keep the power supply in mind, it just might be the problem.
Check back tomorrow in the TechNudge Live Reviews section where I'll tell you more about the power supply, and post some images of how tight things are in this cramped case...
Who needs 800 number tech support when we can have this much fun?
--Jonas
posted by digitaldoc at 10:12 AM
14 Comments:
I've seen this type of thing before. I had a customer that had her PC lock up every time she tried to burn a CD. I replaced the CD burner becase it HAD to be the problem.
Tried another CD, promptly locked up, motherboard(thinking hard drive controller, no joy.Huh! Now what? The only other thing that made sense to me would be the power supply. Bingo! It burns like a champ again.
I was toying with the motherboard as the source of the problem, but I'm glad I didn't rip that out. I'm also not sure what a RAM problem is like, but they can be notoriously troublesome to figure out as well.
From my surfing, it looks like power supply problems can be tough to figure out, so I'm quite pleased I came to the diagnosis as quickly as I did!
Thanks for sharing your experience as well!
Have seen this also with memory and with a motherboard. Very similar symptons.
Remember what the world's greatest detective always said:
"When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, MUST be the solution."
Thanks for the thoughts Gyro. I think the key is to find the diagnosis before you've replaced every part in the system! If I got lucky, Believe me, I'm due for a break these days!
I was hoping it wasn't the motherboard, of for no other reason that it would have been more money, and work to replace.
The PS on my son's craputer blew out dramatically a few weeks ago, letting the smoke and some sparks out. The look on his face as his computer literally went up in smoke was worth the price of a new power supply. :-D
I think in Father Dale's situation, the dagnosis was not too elusive...
I noticed that too over the weekend. I think the conclusion is that a name brand power supply purchased separately is better than what comes with the case.
About two years ago I was experiencing random crashes and reboots. Occasionally the system would become unbootable. I tried multiple AV programs and diagnostics, did a complete rebuild. I even scraped and re-applied my thermal paste in case heat was the problem. I borrowed my roommate's RAM to test that component. I tried a different OS on a different physical drive. Since nothing else was wrong, I knew it was either my motherboard or CPU. I replaced my Athlon XP 2400+ with a 3000. The crashes got more frequent. If a more powerful processor makes the problem worse, I concluded, the problem must be the power supply. A new Antec PSU made everything right. Most difficult to diagnose PC problem ever.
Then the lesson learned is that it should be the first thing you try, no?
It's certainly cheaper than a new processor to try a new power supply. If one doesn't overclock their processor, I've not had one go bad...ever! Bad power supply goes way up on my differential diagnosis for these types of problems.
Next time I'll certainly try the power supply before the processor. Not only is it cheaper, I'm much more likely to have a compatible spare lying around, making it free to try. At that point, however, I'd only been building for seven or eight years and never seen a PSU go bad. I had seen numerous processors and motherboards conk out, without overclocking. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to upgrade my CPU.
The Athlon XP 3000+ was a nice processor. I had a 2800+ and it was great.
I haven't run into this yet, but will keep this in mind in case I do.
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