Causes of PSU breakdown

[Dax_Brandy]

Guys, what are the ways wherein the PSU will fail? these happened to me recently..

Well, my Enermax 350Watts just died right after i got home and switched it ON. and it is not a silent death but a big bang with fireworks display and smoke effects...

i was still using it in the morning before going to work. after i shutdown the PC, i didnt turn off the AVR.. but when i got home at night, the LED indicator lamp of the AVR wasnt lit but the AVR was ON. when i checked the AVR's fuse, it's busted. I switched to another AVR (not knowing the real problem was), when i powered ON the new AVR, the PSU then suddenly sparked and smoked...and the AVR got busted again.

the good news though was that on the PSU was damaged and not the whole system. bad news, well windows was corrupted and couldnt be repaired, in short i'm back to square 1 with all my data lost.

Nobody uses my PC except me...here's my specs:

AXP1700+ TbredB @ 2600+ |Volcano 7+ |Ep-8K5A |2x256Mb DDR333 |Inno3d GF FX5200 128Mb DDR | Maxtor 40Gb 7200rpm | 10GB Seagate HDD | Liteon CDRW/DVD Combo Drive|52x Cyber CDROM| Enermax EG365P VE| 4 x 80mm quad LED fan

if it's overloaded, will the PSU really burn? i have the PSU returned for replacement.

[wju425]

What's an AVR?

\o/ Billy

[jkrohn]

Did the fan in it die? Happened to a friend of mine. Was a sight to see when it got too hot.

Jkrohn

[Dax_Brandy]

AVR - automatic voltage regulator...
normally, the fans speeds low... but i never noticed if it was spinning or not when the problem occurred.

[NDC]

Number one cause of PSU death is from running the power supply at max. That's why when your system draws 300W, you would get a PSU that's 350~400W so it doesn't run under full load all the time...

[Dax_Brandy]

my next problem came along after i installed a generic 300W Psu. now i got frequent BSODs. im running win2k. the installation was done without error and now the system is freaking out.. can it be a hardware problem. i cut off some load to the system and now it runs the ff:
1. CPu & mobo + HSF
2. geforce fx card
3. 1 hdd
4. 1 dvd/cdrw

[DanU]

Common failures I've seen are dried out electrolytic caps and blown power transistors. Both are often caused by insufficient cooling. The common rule that every 10C rise in temperature halves a device's lifetime applies here too.

With cheap PSUs there is also the factor of crappy design... picking poor quality components and using very little design margin. If you push them too far... POP!.

[wju425]

I see. So you're using the AVR to control the line (110v) voltage to the power supply? If I guessed right it's to supply constant voltage to the PS under different loads? Wouldn't the PS do that on its own?

\o/ Billy

[Omardeth]

look on the side of the power supply you installed and look at the 12v "rail" if it is shows lower than 12a that could be your problem . your cpu pulls about 7.5a by itself . your optical drives all pull 1a or more each your hd's are about 1a each also . you video card pulls alot of power also , off the 3.3v rail if i remember right . hsf and case fans are off the 12v rail at about .25a each .

sounds like with the bsod errors you power supply is working to hard and not giving anuuff juice and thats what is giving you the errors .

[Dax_Brandy]

Originally posted by wju425
I see. So you're using the AVR to control the line (110v) voltage to the power supply? If I guessed right it's to supply constant voltage to the PS under different loads? Wouldn't the PS do that on its own?

\o/ Billy

actually, we use a 220Vac line and sometimes fluctuation occurs and the avr can do the job well by providing steady 220V..i dont know if the PSU can do the job but in most cases here, it is required to have an avr rather than plug the PSU directly to the source outlet. ive seen cases where the PC freezes because the line voltage goes way below 200Vac.

well, i re-formatted my drive and reinstall win2k. it seems ok for now but still needs some monitoring..