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anonymous 30 May 2003

alright, tonight I tried to boot up my computer and it was having problems. A message came up that said something to the effect of "There's a problem with your hardware. Check the Hardware Monitor for details." So I checked the hardware monitor but there was no explanation of anything, just fan speed and voltage ratings. I don't know what the correct fan speeds should be, but anyway - I turned it off and opened up the case and looked around. Nothing was unplugged but I went in and pushed in connections just in case something was loose. Then I booted it up again and it worked. So I shut it down and tried it again but as soon as I turned it on I heard a loud pop coming from what I think was the power supply and now the computer won't go on.

I think this means the power supply is f**ked. Does this sound like a correct diagnosis? If not, what else could be the problem. I'm not a computer technician but I know a little.

I'm running a P4 2.4 with XP and a P4PE board.

Any ideas?

thanks,
Nick

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anonymous Fri, 05/30/2003 - 21:51

oh, i forgot to mention that after I exited out of Hardware Monitor and Setup it would begin to boot. It would get to the Windows XP screen (not the desktop, just the Windows XP loading screen) and then automatically shut off and restart and do it again.

That might be significant to the problem. I don't know....

Nick

Opus2000 Sat, 05/31/2003 - 07:01

The hardware problem it is reporting is saying that either the fan for the CPU or the power supply is going to slow! You can choose to have it ignore these or if you have an adjustable fan control on either the CPU or PSU, speed it up!

If the system is shutting itself down I would make sure that you either put the heat sink on properly or if you applied thermal paste to put more on to make sure it's done properly!

Opus :D

anonymous Sat, 05/31/2003 - 09:10

I have the fans that came with everything. The heat sink came with the processor. The Power supply fan is just the stock fan. Should I assume that the speeds for these are not adjustable? If they're not, should I buy extra fans when I replace the power supply? How many? Also, what's a good power supply wattage. I think the one that blew out is 350.

Thanks Opus - king of all computer questions,
Nick

anonymous Sun, 06/01/2003 - 08:21

It was the power supply. The guy at PC Club said everything was fine and that I probably just got a shitty power supply when I bought the case. He replaced it with another power supply from an identical case. I hope this takes care of it. Are the stock power supplies generally shitty? Or did I just receive one bad egg?

Nick

Opus2000 Sun, 06/01/2003 - 08:59

Depends on the brand of the PSU!

I always replace any built on PSU with an Enermax that has speed control on it! Enermax are one of the best PSU's out there, along side Antec.

I prefer Enermax due to their nice cabling design, which makes the wires in the PC more organized and less cluttered!

Better airflow that way. Also both Enermax and Antec have dual fans on them, one on the inside and the other on the outside!

I recommend the minimum be 350 Watts but idealy for the proper overhead get yourself a 430 Watt PSU!

Opus :D

Opus2000 Mon, 06/02/2003 - 17:55

Mr Blue

Look at it this way....24V for ATX PSU plus 3.3V on P4 CPU(ya know that little 4 pin dealio)

5V per drive...

Now, you have PCI cards and video cards, onboard peripherals, USB devices, FireWire devices....etc etc etc..

Now, good PSU's will have a better filtering process, which is very important. The less filtering it does the more noise that is emitted into the system, whether you hear that noise or not is not important. The fact that it is there is the key.

The higher wattage the PSU you have the less noise there is going to be induced when the PSU is more than 20% loaded!

HTH

Opus :D

MisterBlue Wed, 06/04/2003 - 20:37

Gee, Opus,

I can never tell if you are joking or if you are just testing me :D .

OK, for "shits and giggles" (as my buddy says) I will assume that you are testing me. So here is what I learned during my electrical engineering studies :D ).

The only valid reason I can see to justify significant overhead in a power supply would be to account for certain "spike loads" that are caused e.g. when a hard disk spins up - but even those units are generally "current limited" to prevent damage to these sensitive systems.

While preparing for my test here, I did a quick research and found the main CPU to be the main consumer in a PC. An Athlon XP2600+ consumes roughly 55 Watts during normal crunching operation. Hard disks are less than 12 Watts each during read/write operation - the heat generated is usually a good indication of the power consumption. The motherboard and memory are no big deal in the overall picture but let's account them for another 20 Watts. Same for the graphics card (although 10-15 W will be plenty for most cards we are talking about). Throw in a sound card and add them generously together and you are at 150W tops. A 300W power supply accordingly offers 100% headroom.

I honestly don't know where the "20% load" guideline comes from so please don't hesitate to educate me. I promise I can be convinced :D but I also admit that I have serious doubts whether it is really necessary to have 400% of headroom in a power supply ... :roll: .

MisterBlue.

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