Dell PC has died - advice please

wackojackouk

Hi guys

I got given a Dell P3 933 with a nice 512 mb ram the other day.

Installed XP Home and everything went fine so happy days.

Ordered a USB2 PCI card and DVD Writer from SVP which arrived today so tonight decided to install them.

Undid the case slotted in the PCI card and connected it up - pressed the button on the front and nothing

Undid the case and the motherboard light is on but nothing is happening.

Thought the button at the front might have disconnected so held it in and noticed the light on the front button flashes on and off. Checked all cables that I can see on motherboard/hdd/floppy/dvd etc and it seems to be plugged in ok.

Had a chat with my m8 and he reckons the PSU might be knackered.

In fact I tried the kettle lead in old pc (compaq) and it works fine (hence this post).

Noticed when I plug the DELL in get a clunk noise from around PSU area.

Can anyone shed some light on this? - Is it likely to be a PSU problem and if so do I just need to buy a new one?

Also any idea's which one to get and where from - cheap as poss please as I'm skint already this month.

Thanks

WJUK

scottishf

i think you can only use dell power supplies on dell computers, and as far as i can remember they dont come cheap

thetope

yep, sadly dell psus are proprietary. if you are handy with electronics you *can* rewire a standard psu yourself - there are wiring diags online (my boyfriend managed to do this when a spider(!) did for my parents' psu)

an alternative is ebay, there seems to be a few people sell dell parts on there.

wackojackouk

thanks m8 - i found the part number is PS-5201-8D1 as well and i see PS-5201-8D2 on eBay - any idea's anyone if this will fit?

rogerramjet

Have you taken the PCI card back out? it maybe something as simple as a conflict! Also, did you fit the DVD drive? if you did, did you check to ensure you had set the jumper on it to the appropriate setting? (slave/master)

If the system powers the PSU is probably ok, if not done already, remove the PCI card and see if it boots, also if you have fitted the DVD drive disconnec the power supply and see if it boots. Most DVD writers come set as master as standard and if its been fitted on the same IDE cable as the hard drive it will conflict and not do anything

wackojackouk

Cheers Roger.

I took out the PCI card anyway and in the end just tried booting with nothing else connected (removed power to dvd/hdd/floppy) and still there was no fan spinning or anything.

Looks like a !!!!!!ed PSU :0(

Any idea if the one on eBay will fit?

Cheers

WJUK