Dying PSU? And replacement advice.

Yeem

Member
Apr 19, 2010
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Hi. I'm running an ASUS P5B Deluxe, E6400 @ stock speeds, 3x DDR2 sticks (lol indeed), Nvidia 8800 GTS 512MB, 2x SATA HDDs, 1 DVD-R/W, 1 Floppy. 6x 120mm fans.

The PSU is a BeQuiet 650W Straight Power. I've had it for a bit over 3 years now. Never done any long term overclocking, so it hasn't been pushed very far for extended periods of time.

For about a week now my computer has been acting up. Not wanting to boot up, and sometimes choking when playing games (stutters, screen goes black for about 5 sec, then everything goes back to normal). The choking is rare though.

The boot up problems detailed: I press the power button, everything spins up and the computer tries to boot. Before anything has time to appear on the screen (sometimes there's time to catch a glimpse of the blue ASUS boot screen), the computer just shuts down. I wait a few seconds and try again, same thing happens. This happens about 3-5 times before I'm presented with the "Overclock failed blablabla" message. And I'm supposed to go into bios to adjust setting (F1) or reset to default settings (F2) and continue. Whichever option I choose, the computer boots fine after that. Even if I don't change/lower any settings in bios.

I ran a Prime95 torture test all night last night and there were no errors, and chkdisk didn't report any errors either when I ran it. So CPU, RAM, Motherboard(?) and HDDs seem to be a-okay.

Well, today it just won't boot at all. It tries for a few seconds and gives up. Hence, I strongly suspect the PSU is dying. Are my suspicions correct? (I don't have another PSU to test at the moment,)

So, if my suspicions are correct, I need some replacement advice. I'm going to get it from a local shop that has good prices and a nice web page.Linkety http://www.jimmspc.fi/listaa/533 . (Sorry about the language.) I was thinking about the Corsair 550W 550VX for 80€. Mostly because of the 5 year warranty. And jonnyguru gave it a good review as well. Thoughts? Feelings? Feel free to recommend any of the other PSUs in the list in the link (there are 3 pages). I'd rather get away with spending as little as possible, but I know I need a quality PSU, so no cheapo 50€ 700W toy ;)

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your insights.


[edit] A quick update: Now nothing at all happens when I press the power button. The blue light on the motherboard is still glowing though.
 
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Yeem

Member
Apr 19, 2010
178
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Thanks for the replies. I take it you agree it's a PSU problem?

What other PSUs are available in Finnland?
The only PSUs available to me really are the ones from the Jimm's (@link). They stock almost every brand.

I'd like to go with Antec, as I've been very satisfied with them in the past. But it's more expensive than the Corsair and has shorter warranty.

I'm also thinking about the Chieftec 650W "Super Series" for 67€ (with 3 year warranty). How's Chieftec these days? I seem to recall they had a pretty bad rep a few years ago.
 

TemjinGold

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2006
3,050
65
91
I'm fairly certain your PSU is the culprit. Either the Antec or the Corsair would be fine. The Seasonic and Enermax are good too. I wouldn't risk a PSU on Chieftec.