- Jun 24, 2001
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I need help finding a 200w+ ATX PSU that is ~4" deep. A little longer might work but it must be shorter than most. It would be replacing a a "Bestec Model No.: ATX-1956D" with an HP part number "0950-4106." It has +12v, 20-pin ATX connector, no AUX, SATA, PEG, etc, connectors (just floppy and ol' standard drive connectors). I've tried searching Newegg for something similar and come up short.
The story so far:
A friend of a friend's system was just powering off intermittently and I suspected the PSU many months ago but could not find one that I could swap it with. The only "short" PSUs on Newegg had multiple reviews supporting eachother's claims that they didn't even last 90 days. Woah.
Anyway, I checked the HDD's SMART stuff and saw an alarmingly high reallocated sector count, so I knew she had other pressing matters too. The HDD I ordered went to the other side of the country (PayPal address vs. desired shipping address) so she just tolerated it the way it was and continued patiently waiting for me to find all the stuff she needed cheaply.
That's when her OS hosed itself, no doubt due to the HDD. Even safe mode wouldn't work. The partition wasn't accessible even in the recovery console (said something about not being able to enumerate directories/files when I switched to the drive letter or did a directory listing). Granted, the HDD issues could have also been caused by the intermittent shut downs and thus be related to the PSU. So, I swapped out the HDD with one I found in the dumpster and reinstalled the OS. I decided to take it home and get all the updates it needed because she was probably the last person in San Diego with Dial-Up.
I brought it home, plugged it in, the PSU light came on, and as soon as I press the power button it goes off. The system fan twitches and stops. Unplugging it and plugging it back in will get the PSU light to come back on and get one more twitch out of the CPU fan.
Crap. I can't test it with my PCP&C TurboCool 1KW because it's A) WAAAAY too long and B) Inside a systems with custom wire routing using holes and hot glue to route everything underneath the motherboard. I was using the super-thick PCP&C power cable and a super-thick custom-ordered one that I use for my PS3 (right-angle in a rare direction for a specific vertical orientation). I tried different outlets in the house because I recall a system my brother encountered where it worked in some locations and not others (also a PSU issue but strange to troubleshoot).
So, I don't have another PSU to test and the smaller size requirement keeps me from buying any old ATX PSU. Actually, it looks like there is enough room for a *mounted* standard ATX PSU but, because it can't slide in from the back and the optical drives can't slide in from the front (stupid drive bay bezel stealthing), you probably can't get it in there even with the optical drives removed it will require removing the HSF, memory, etc to get it in.
The story so far:
A friend of a friend's system was just powering off intermittently and I suspected the PSU many months ago but could not find one that I could swap it with. The only "short" PSUs on Newegg had multiple reviews supporting eachother's claims that they didn't even last 90 days. Woah.
Anyway, I checked the HDD's SMART stuff and saw an alarmingly high reallocated sector count, so I knew she had other pressing matters too. The HDD I ordered went to the other side of the country (PayPal address vs. desired shipping address) so she just tolerated it the way it was and continued patiently waiting for me to find all the stuff she needed cheaply.
That's when her OS hosed itself, no doubt due to the HDD. Even safe mode wouldn't work. The partition wasn't accessible even in the recovery console (said something about not being able to enumerate directories/files when I switched to the drive letter or did a directory listing). Granted, the HDD issues could have also been caused by the intermittent shut downs and thus be related to the PSU. So, I swapped out the HDD with one I found in the dumpster and reinstalled the OS. I decided to take it home and get all the updates it needed because she was probably the last person in San Diego with Dial-Up.
I brought it home, plugged it in, the PSU light came on, and as soon as I press the power button it goes off. The system fan twitches and stops. Unplugging it and plugging it back in will get the PSU light to come back on and get one more twitch out of the CPU fan.
Crap. I can't test it with my PCP&C TurboCool 1KW because it's A) WAAAAY too long and B) Inside a systems with custom wire routing using holes and hot glue to route everything underneath the motherboard. I was using the super-thick PCP&C power cable and a super-thick custom-ordered one that I use for my PS3 (right-angle in a rare direction for a specific vertical orientation). I tried different outlets in the house because I recall a system my brother encountered where it worked in some locations and not others (also a PSU issue but strange to troubleshoot).
So, I don't have another PSU to test and the smaller size requirement keeps me from buying any old ATX PSU. Actually, it looks like there is enough room for a *mounted* standard ATX PSU but, because it can't slide in from the back and the optical drives can't slide in from the front (stupid drive bay bezel stealthing), you probably can't get it in there even with the optical drives removed it will require removing the HSF, memory, etc to get it in.
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