PSU dead?

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ohGrFreak

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I looked over the random reboot sticky and think I may have a bad PSU.

Here's what happens. I had a couple random reboots today, haven't had one in months until today. There was no error or "windows crashed" messages upon reboot, so I thought it was just nothing. It turns off again and does not reboot this time. So I think it may be static electricity (a problem I've had in the past) so I know the room is dusty and dust carries static elec. I open the case after flipping the PSU switch and unplugging the comp. I use compressed air to do a fairly good clean up job, making sure to get each case fan, VGA fan and HSF.

I plug the comp back in and then switch the PSU on and then try to boot up. Nothing happens. The only light I see is the green light on my mobo, the fans do not even come on. When I was having real bad troubles with my comp, at least the fans would come on, this is what makes me think that it's the PSU.

I don't think any other piece of hardware would cause the fans to not come on upon boot up. Of course, this has not happened before, I have always at least got the fans to turn even when I had bad crashes.

Any ideas or suggestions? I do not have another PSU to swap with.

This is happening to the comp in my sig. The PSU is stock raidmax 420 watt a little more than a year old.
 
go to newegg and buy a new PSU. If that doesn't fix your booting problems, than your motherboard might be kaput (thats what happened with one of my old motherboards).
 
Ah jeez, I hope it's not my mobo, although it's been through a lot in the past, mainly with the static electricity I talked about. It's been zapped quite a bit (my house is not grounded).

But, even though the mobo would be dead, if the PSU still works, wouldn't that power the case fans?

I'll be checking out mobos and PSU's. I'm a little lost as to what I need in a PSU though. All sorts of different connectors and such. I know I don't need the new SATA harddrive power connectors, but I do not know if my mobo is a 20 or 24 pin power connector.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817153023

I have my eye on this Thermaltake 430 watt PSU. I have no idea what is good in terms of rails and volts. My 6800 uses two molex connectors, I have a 250 Gig harddrive, a power hungry 3.2 P4 and 1gig DDR and only one DVD-R/W and a floppy. Not that many things to power. It also has the 20/24 mobo connector, so it will work with my mobo no matter what.

Does this PSU look good to you guys? The reviews are raving at the quality, and it's the only thing I can afford right now.
 
The answer lies with a geek and a voltmeter!! Youneed to geek test your power supply: turn on the puter...if it just sits there that's okay. Take your digital voltmeter and attach the black lead to the power supply case and then back check all the voltages to the 20(or 24 pin)pin and 4 pin ATX. If any of the voltages are less than 5% output, you probably have a failed PSU. HOWEVER!!!! Check the ground (black wires) for voltage. If any of th black leads show greater than .0010 volts DC...you have mobo circuit leakage and your mobo or CPU are toated!!
 
Since I have no idea about electric current and such, I'm going to leave it up to process of elimination.

So, the **** computer powered up all by itself yesterday, no sh*t. The motherboard voiced an error through the speakers, it repeated "system failed, CPU test" over and over. I did a google and basically it's either a overheated PSU, vid card, or the CPU.

I then reseated the video card, didn't work, then I installed another, didn't work.

I checked the motherboard light, like the threads I found on google said, and it seems okay (green light turns on).

I did smell something smokey coming out of the PSU. Since I still had the case open, I could tell where the smell was coming from, and it surely wasn't the CPU.

The PSU did power the fans again, but they seemed to spin a little slower than usual.

Could a PSU die, then come back and struggle to live again? The computer was silent and dead for days before it came back on out of nowhere.
 
I have my eye on the Thermaltake TR2 WOO70 430 Watt PSU. I did find a PSU I like by Sunbeam, but mainly because it's modular and flashy, but seems to be comparable with the Thermaltake. The Fortron I found is also comparable, but doesn't look that much better than the Thermaltake. What it really boils down to is finding out what's better quality and what's more stable.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153023

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817709006

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104953
 
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