Tweakers Anonymous

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airboatr

Post by airboatr »

gevers1 wrote:
!!!POP!!! goes the powersupply ....

:sad:
You might want to have a look at the Electrical system Itself.
sounds like connections in the branch circuit maybe?
I couldn't say for sure. But it sounds like you have some.

some things to consider,, for everyone really

If the plug from the equipment doesn't stay tight in the
outlet there will be some resistance at that point. (a slowing of the electron flow)
If there are other points in the branch circuit that have loose connections, (in the wall outlet boxes for switches and outlets)this is another point of resistance.

if there are enough of them,
then things like, the voltage , and Hz cycles will not be correct.

I see this alot , being an electrician,
most of the time the loads placed on a bad wiring job
won't show themselves for years and years.
Simply because the loads haven't been sufficient to cause the bad joint to fail, or the equipment to fail.
But all it takes is one time and this is exactly what you will have
From an electrician who has seen this Too many times, Please have it checked out. And make sure you have a good ground or Earth as it is refered to in the UK in place.


How it works........
the Load (pull, /or current) stays the same,
regardless of the the voltage (the push) present.......
If the transformer isn't getting the push , it doesn't matter......
the (Load) will pull current even at the sacrifice of voltage ..yes even more voltage drop
...snowballing,,,,,
........Working harder and hotter, melting the very thin insulation on the windings of the transformer and causing a dead short.


<<< BTW that dead short or overload should have tripped the breaker switch or blown the fuse>>>>

and .... almost done
If the primary side of the transformer isn't getting the voltage in needs to.
the secondary will also have a drop thus the board will be under powered and poor performance will be the result.

a 15 percent drop is critical and will in time cause failure
to equipment. some equipment ,will burn up faster that use capacitors and micro processors

and this all works at the speed of light so when it goes.....
it's frekin going. you ain't gonna jump out of it's way.
or turn the switch back off again :wink: fast enough.

you know ....... some time ago, someone had posted a problem here . and I was explaining this to them
I think one person had found, what I had been tying to convey.

well, I hope the cost to fix what you need to, are minimal
ATB

gevers1
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Post by gevers1 »

Hi atb, thanks for that info!

I'm pretty sure it's the PSU. I took it out of the machine then plugged it into the wall. Sure enough, it went 'pop' and all the lights went out. When i tried my old 300w powersupply, it switched on just grand. Even tried different leads (in case it was that) but no, it's the PSU. It's in a box, ready to go back to the supplier. Another one is on order.

Quixoticish
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Post by Quixoticish »

gevers1 wrote:Hi atb, thanks for that info!

I'm pretty sure it's the PSU. I took it out of the machine then plugged it into the wall. Sure enough, it went 'pop' and all the lights went out. When i tried my old 300w powersupply, it switched on just grand. Even tried different leads (in case it was that) but no, it's the PSU. It's in a box, ready to go back to the supplier. Another one is on order.
Did you leave the PSU plugged into the motherboard and all of your drives whilst it was out of your case? You aren't supposed to be able to power up an ATX power supply unless the big strip that connects to the motherboard is plugged in (you can short two of the pins if you need to test it outside of the system however it's not recommended) so if they went pop or even powered on whilst out of the system and only plugged into the mains I'd suggest something is wrong with the PSU generally.

gevers1
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Post by gevers1 »

No, I took the whole unit out, switched on the 'on - off' button, then plugged it into the wall (to avoid touching the case). Sure enough, pop went the unit, out went the lights. Much Basil Fawlty-esque ranting ensued.

Quixoticish
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Post by Quixoticish »

gevers1 wrote:No, I took the whole unit out, switched on the 'on - off' button, then plugged it into the wall (to avoid touching the case). Sure enough, pop went the unit, out went the lights. Much Basil Fawlty-esque ranting ensued.
Ouch, definately sounds as though the PSU was duff before this even happened then, it shouldn't even think of doing anything when plugged in outside the PC unless you have the motherboard block of pins plugged in (or have shorted pin 14 with one of the grounds).

The problem with cheap PSU's is when they die they sometimes take half of your system with them, whereas an Antec or Globalwin may well die in a shower of sparks and a loud bang but you're pretty much assured it's not touched anything else.

Funnily enough cheap PSU's are also the main cause of crashes on most PC's I fix these days; I examine the rails with a multimeter and many of them can be plus or minus an entire volt out of what they are rated for. I've seen a 300W Antec that had much stronger rails than a 600W cheap generic one.

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Post by gevers1 »

Well, i'm after buying a Antec TruePower Trio 650Watt unit, hopefully that'll work a bit better than the 'Sweetex' (i think it was called) unit that i had.

What worries me though is that i discover that my machine is fried when i plug the new psu in. I guess I'll find out tomorrow when the new unit arrives.

On a side note, my wife has been feeling *very* guilty about blowing up the computer (however indirectly). I suspect there's a lot of milage in this one yet. She rang me up this afternoon to tell me she bought me a copy of this months 'PC Pilot'.

Now, thats love!

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