PSU issues

Ferris

a week ago i woke the PC up from standby and left the room for a while. when i came back there was a smell of melting plastic in the room and after a bit of searching i realised it was coming from the PSU on my PC. i turned the PC off at the mains and then tried it again later on and it seemed to work OK, the smell had gone and i wasn't getting any instability, even when watching videos, playing games etc.

over the last couple of days the PC has been doing this weird thing where if you switch it off at the mains (which i do overnight) the PC won't come on the first time you press the power button. it will light up, fans spin up, start making a noise etc, and then stop after about a second. sometimes this happens twice. after about thirty seconds, it starts up fine. similarly if you press the power button when it hasn't just been turned on at the mains, it works fine.

now i'm fairly certain the PSU is messed up somehow, so i have two questions:
1) any idea what could be causing such problems? am i being incredibly stupid in continuing to use the system?

2) can anyone recommend a reasonable quality but cheapish PSU as a replacement? i have an athlon 64 processor and need SATA connectors, and probably 500W or so of power. any recommendations of brands/online shops with cheap delivery very gratefully received!

thanks!

ormus

sounds very much like the psu is on the way out. ive seen similar problems over the yrs. a new psu has cured them.
try aria or ebuyer.
from about 6 or 8 quid to over a 100 quid!

Blacksheep1979

don't touch the cheap ones as they don't last and quite possibly will take out some of your other components with it. A decentish coolermaster (or similar) 400W one will cost about £25.

planemad

Get moving fast.
I have know in the past that if a PSU pops it can take out other components as well.

As above don't go for the ebuyer own brand value PSUs as they don't tend to last to long.

Ferris

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

don't touch the cheap ones as they don't last and quite possibly will take out some of your other components with it. A decentish coolermaster (or similar) 400W one will cost about £25.

thanks, any links for one of those? anyone have any recommendations based on personal experience? ideally i want a good compromise between price and quality (he says, stating the obvious). any thoughts on this one?
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=221000&doy=17m11

Ferris

damn.

yes, i'm a procrastinating idiot, and i've put off getting a replacement PSU, and yesterday the computer would not turn on (or rather it would turn on, but not spin up properly, and not output anything to the monitor). i can only assume the motherboard and/or graphics card are fried, although at the moment i don't have replacement anything to test it out with.

thankfully at least the hard drive seems to be intact, and i was able to put it into someone else's machine to burn off all the important pictures and stuff.

turns out the PSU was not a cheap generic thing as i suspected, but an ANTEC, which is what a lot of people had recommended to me as a replacement elsewhere.

but the moral of the story is: don't mess about with PSUs any doubts, just replace them. end of.

Cerro

Here's a list of tiered PSUs (by brand). They do alot of PSU testing, its just a case of finding the right PSU for you.

Be careful when it comes to cheap high wattage PSUs, they might have a high wattage rating but generally speaking, when its cheap, the stuff its built from is cheap... so you get what you pay for in most cases. Cheap PSUs tend to give out uneven supplies and can go "pop" at anytime. Stick with a reliable brand (doesn't have to be mega expensive) with the right power rating for you, that way you will get something that is right for you at a fair price.

zee_2

goto ebuyer.co.uk good psu under £20 delivered, also they have forum for advice, vgc service...zee

letsbehonest

I had a similar problem earlier this year done the research, buy the best you can afford, go for a reputable brand, personally I went for a Thermaltake TR2 470W

ormus

dont get too hung up on the brand/quality/price issue.
ive seen cheapies and branded ones blow up.
yes the cheapies do seem more prone, but its all relative, even the cheap ones can last for yrs.
remember, you are only likely to replace the psu just once, (in the PCs lifetime), before you upgrade to another PC anyways.