"Purchased a new Power Spec B660 9/16. In May 2017 took it in for repair, brought it home and it kept freezing up, took it back in and it was replaced with a new one. Now the new one (B662) is doing the same thing! Stay away from POWER SPEC"
"This is probably a good source for PowerSpec since the last post.
I bought this (returned/Open box/refurbished)PowerSpec 6240 with AMD 2600 XP, 512 DDR and all the generic brand name components such as DVD, CDRW and integrated media. I paid $499 for it with 1 year extended warantee (total of 2). Pretty good deal especially for AMD cheap where heat are problematic. I inspected all the components the first thing i got home and i believed previous buyer used it not more than a week and returned it for some reasons OR may be the same problem as I encountered later. All the components have no dusk, scratch nor finger prints) or may be PowerSpec/Micro Center did a good job in cleaning up the refurbish models. Anyway, i don't care as long as it works. Here is the story goes.
Running the original WinXP Home was fine until i started to go online with the lousy LTWin/Agere modem they used. The connections were varied between 28.8 to 40K. That is a ridiculous speeds compared to my other 2 old computers(48 to 50.2). So I went out to buy a Best Data modem. It works like a champ betweem 50.2 to 53.X!! (above the standard). The next thing I plugged in my older video card (AGP4X ATI 9100 64MB). Things get worse. The computer restarts itself randomly every < 1 hour. The computer restarts withing 10 second while i play Warcraft III. So, it is common sense to suspect that i need latest drivers for the Video Card and the modem. Took 2 days to get the lastest third party drivers, Mainboard drivers (from MSI), and a complete upgrade from Microsoft. It seems like the computer reboots more often than before. Spent another 3 days ugrading to WinXP Pro. During upgrade process it throws bunch of hexadecima codes to the death of blue screen saying that some drivers not match). I removed all the components i have added and it still complaints about similar errors. Now i cannot load any operating systems but bunch of craps stay in the HD. I was thinking to myself last attempt or I will return that machine to MicroCenter.
I downgraded it to Windows 2000 Pro. Luckily, everything's works fine and in 3 days has only restarted once. (I have disabled the crash reboot automatically in the control panel in the whole scenario i have mentioned above)
So why does the machine rebooted itself all these time where temperature of the system (32 +/-) and CPU (72 +/-)? Note: AMD XP 2600 die rate is at 85. The last thing i suspected was PowerSpec has been using cheap market broker rate memory where Win XP will usually more sensitive as compare to Win2000. Just suspect .. i didn't inpected it yet.
Another defects, The blowout fan from rear sometime produces cranking noise (sounds like the blades are hitting the fan grill)!! I have to shutdown the computer and reboot to get rid of the noise (mostly i am lucky). I am thinking of replacing it with 80 mm Panaflo or a Sunon fan if its getting worst.
The assembly of the case was not neat. There are little holes (crack of holes) at the side panel where is reduce the efficient of the air intake flow.
Minor internal design flaw. PowerSpec could have put the original 120 hard driver above the floppy A and leave the center bay empty for secondary HD. Existing hard driver cable is hard to reach a secondary hard driver.
Conclusion, so far so good for the price. I hope PowerSpec could refund for the modem i bought as replacement for the original LT WIn modem. And get me a better fan for free. It took me many days to get this machine stable and running without rebooting itself and I can't even think about upgrading this machine to XP in the future. I could have spend another $150 for Dell (with monitor and printer offer) and avoid those hassles.
But overall quality for the price you paid for. In fact, if you stay with the original settings and components you should be fine. But are you expect to let those PCI slots stay empty ?? No upgrade ? Not for me, i want the machine capable to do something more than checking emails.
Hope these information will help others before the buy.
I am getting obsess to get to know what components and brand they use to build this machine.
If anyone of you know the following please respond to this thread.
Case made/manufacturer:
Power supply specs:
============ I am back ====
It's me, EQ. I posted the original message for PowerSpec 6240.
Powerspec did a terrible job in installing the heatsink. The reason my PowerSpec6240 keep dump memory is because of overheating. Guess what the heat when i sitting idle? 79-80 Celcious !! Everytime i configure firewall for ports or running clean disk, the machine will dump memory and reboot. The last thing i tried was pushing the heatsink in and twisted it a little bit and reboot the machine. Voila .. the temperature dropped to 61 to 65 Celcious. I did message to PowerSpecs and did not get any response for 2 weeks now. All i need is to ask weather 65 celcios is normal. To my understanding more than 60 celcious is hot for most Athlon cpus. So, their rating is dropping !!
EQ"