[Nuke]

i just got up like 20 minutes ago and when i went to hit my power button all the fans and lights came on and then spontaneously decided to go out. it was all working perfectly fine last night. we did get a ridiculous amount of snow last night and i suspect that caused a sag or a spike on the grid may have ****ed up my power supply. im gonna keep it unwired for awhile in hopes that the caps in the psu will discharge and fix whatever the problem might be.

i might just have to replace the psu, but i want a second opinion. cant really afford to buy replacements for good parts. might just get a psu just to upgrade from a 600 watt to an 800 watt. still it pisses me off that the good computer fails but all the old computers seem to work fine.

[Kosh]

My old laptop did something like that, and through testing of the parts to see which ones could be sold I found out it was the CPU. Before you replace anything test your parts to see what's actually broken.

[Nuke]

i dont really have anything to test the parts on. its a c2d and my next best computer is an old athllon 64 3500. it uses ddr2 and the good one uses ddr3. best bet would be to remove the psu and test it on another computer, but nothing else uses that much power.

[Kosh]

I would think if the PSU was toast that it wouldn't even work on a lower power computer, then again I could be mistaken about that.


Don't your friends have any computers?

[Herra Tohtori]

Check the PSU output voltages and currents with a multimeter?

[redsniper]

friends

[Nuke]

i stripped out all non-essential hardware, that didnt work, and i tested the psu on another computer, it worked, but most of the leads werent used (it had a 20 pin connector and a 4 pin cpu connector, while the psu has a 24 pin and an 8 pin respectively). so i wasnt able to test all the pins.

Check the PSU output voltages and currents with a multimeter?

gonna try that now, but my meter is a sucky analog meter. by chance know how to fool a psu into thinking theres a computer attached to it so i can turn it on and test leads?

[achtung]

friends

Why did you have to beat me to it? 

[Nuke]

looks like the core components (psu, memory, cpu). im gonna assume the surge took out a couple of the voltage controllers on the mobo. it does have a direct line to the cpu, asuming there isnt any switching that cuts them when the computer is off. normally the psu will die before it lets an overvoltage into the case, this one just sort of weathered it and dumped everything onto the mobo. im gonna go ahead and order me a new mobo, so i can at the very least test the cpu and memory. the next canidate for failure would be the cpu. if im luckey my ram is still good. looks like im gonna get an early upgrade. 

so far the video card and psu are still good, as is the cd drive. im gonna test the hard drives now, hopefully my data is spared. not that i dont have multiple backups. but i did some work on some of my c++ projects and a partial uv mapping of the htl vulture since then. hopefully i still have those.

seems this whole thing was caused by an avalanche. which wiped out the power station's main lines (why they put the powerlines in an avalanche zone is beyond me). which is ****ed cause we shouldn't have had any snow in the month of april, let alone a foot and a half of the ****.

[Davros]

by chance know how to fool a psu into thinking theres a computer attached to it so i can turn it on and test leads?

join the black + green wires with a paper clip

[Ashrak]

make sure you have a harddrive or something hooked up


or your gonna kill it.

[Nuke]

id rather not, the psu for the most part appears to be working properly.

friends

Why did you have to beat me to it? 

friends are for pussies

i have chronies and wrenches

anyway ive retrofitted my #2 computer, put my 8800, xfi and sata hard drives into it. should hold me off till i can get new core components. a side rant i noticed when i hooked up my possibly fried psu to the board, wga popped up and said i needed to reactivate. for a psu? microsoft must be really desprate.

[perihelion]

Nuke, I'd be very wary of that power supply.  It may appear to be working fine, but if it allowed enough of a surge into the case to frag the motherboard, it may no longer be reliable.  I have had something like that happen to me before where the PSU was damaged but not completely dead, and it killed two motherboards before I finally put two and two together.  [/paranoia]

[Nuke]

probibly a good plan. i did run a stability diagnostic when i had it connected to another computer and it seemed to have passed with flying colors. thing is i can only afford 1 replacement part right now, and theres a good probability i will replace something thats good just to figure out what the problem is.

[Wanderer]

My PSU fried the my old CPU with surgical precision...  That is it left motherboard, memories, graphics card as well as network adapters intact.

[Colonol Dekker]

friends are for pussies

i have chronies and wrenches WHENCHES

Corrected,

That's the WRONG way to go about getting your nuts tighter.......

[Nuke]

you sir are a clever man

[Herra Tohtori]

I believe "cronies and wenches" would be the actually correct form of spelling.

I'm surprised you don't have any minions and concubines instead.

[Nuke]

i wanted minions at first but cronies were less expensive.

[Mefustae]

i wanted minions at first but cronies were less expensive.

Sure, if you want quantity over quality. A few high-quality Henchmen are clearly the better investment over a large number of Cronies.