Power Supply Goes Down! No WU's <*.*> *FIXED* =)

AdmiralTiger

Member
Feb 17, 2003
119
0
0
One word: GODDAMMIT!!

I spoke too soon about the power supply when I joined in the SETI@home crunching several weeks ago (approximately 4 weeks ago, actually) - I did mention about the fact that I replaced my old dodgy power supply that i had from October of 2002 (came with the case) up until approximately June/July... it had a voltage problem, fluctating badly, causing rebooting. I finally gave up at the point when it gave out, went out and bought a new nspire 420 watt power supply from the local mom and pop puter store (they highly recommend the PSU as it's far better than my old one - my old one was also 420 watt.) sometimes in June/July - I don't remember when exactly.

The power supply gave me no problems for several months, gave me good voltage readings for a long time, quite the contrast I get from my old one - it was the reason why I decided to go back to doing WU's for SETI@home. I joined SETI@home on the 24th of August - you guys a few days later... and now it's sunday, the 14th of September and my power supply went out with a bang. Well, not exactly a bang but it did give out the commonly-known scent of a dead part... the burned silicon. I was doing troubleshooting on a fux0red Office installation (SETI@home was off) and was previously restarting my system two or three times in vain attempt to repair the installation (or rather uninstalling it) - I was in the middle of another uninstallation attempt when my system decided to "play dead". A few seconds before, probably merely a coincidence - my fiancee turned off her computer, then upon after the system being off, she heard a bzzzz around the time my system went out. I'm deaf, so I didn't hear that - she's deaf also but she had her hearing aid on. She tried to get my attention but I was busy focusing on this 3rd puter Im using now to talk on IRC explaining my situation, then all of a sudden I started to smell burning silicon... and viola! Two-month-old PSU gone.

after prying off the power supply from the system after unplugging all the molexes from the devices, I noticed a small part of the external case had what is a smoke residue on it - that prompted me to think "oh, screw this warranty! I'm dissecting this mofo" - and so I did, hereby voiding my warranty on the PSU but at that point I didn't care anyway since this was the 2nd PSU that's gone out on me. Upon taking the bottom cap of the PSU off, I gave out a groan after seeing the damage the two black capacitors (I think that's what they are.. they sure look big) caused - a hole on one of the plastic wall protector(?) and I noticed lots of smoke residue on it including the silicon itself being burned - there were a small part of a nearby cable that was somewhat melted. So much for my new PSU.

Soo... since I'm going to be using this system at least for today, I won't be doing the WU's today and probably tomorrow - possibly the rest of the week also at least until I find some $$ to buy a new PSU or if the local mom and pop store is willing to chip in and give me a new PSU, after all they highly recommended me to get that damn thing. That'll be 11 WU's/day or so down the drain - I was so close to breaking the 200 WU barrier and steamrolling toward 250, trying to keep my slight lead over msparish. Right now, according to the SETI stats page, I have 190 WU's completed. I was actually hoping to reach 500 before the SETI@home client goes out the way of the dodo as BIONC comes in to replace it. :(

I'm going to go and relax in an IRC chat where I usually hang out trying to figure out what to do since this is sunday and the local store is closed for the day. Ah well.

UPDATE: I went to the local puter store earlier this morning, and they were more than willing to replace my PSU for free, though the new one was only 400W compared to couple of 420W's - my first 420W (came with the case I bought at Fry's in Burbank, CA) gave out on me after 8 months though it was starting to give out around the 6th month or so - the 2nd one 2 months - so I hope i'll get better results with a 400W since the number 420 seems like a bad number for me. :-/ Let's hope it doesn't apply to the upcoming Radeon R420 GPU core also as it's the video card I'm going to be looking for since it'll be PCI Express based! Anyway, both of my crunching systems are back up and running, but I doubt I'll leave them up for this long - I'll just go for 250 WU's and see where we'll go from here. I'm due to move at the end of the month.
 

Soggysocks

Golden Member
Jun 20, 2001
1,250
0
0
Sorry to hear about the PSU. If you were closer to me, I could help out.

You may want to look into buying a better brand PSU next time.

Some good deals here :)
 

Starrider

Senior member
Sep 29, 2002
278
0
0
I hate when that happens! I've also had a couple of psu's fry and I know that
burned smell all too much:Q Being a repair technician I see alot of it on an
almost daily basis. Doesn't seem to matter what brand you have, there will
always be a few that fail. Hope you have better luck with your next one.
 

paf077

Golden Member
Feb 26, 2001
1,241
0
0
Originally posted by: RaySun2Be
dasm, it sucks when a cruncher is down. :(

It's only 2 months old , return it for a replacement. If the shop that sold it to cares about customer satisfaction, they will
replace on warranty.!

Don't take "no" for an answer!


Paf

 

Smoke

Distributed Computing Elite Member
Jan 3, 2001
12,650
207
106
Power Supplies ... :|

Been there, done that. :(

Hang in there Tig.
 

MDE

Lifer
Jul 17, 2003
13,199
1
81
Great... I have that exact PSU. It's been going sonce January without a hitch though.
 

Freewolf

Diamond Member
Feb 15, 2001
9,673
1
81
Kinda sucks when that happens. We all know the feeling those That's why I try to keep a couple of extras ones these days.