- Aug 25, 2001
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Yeah, we all make mistakes sometimes, no matter how experienced we are at building PCs.
I recently availed myself of some sales on EVGA 600W and ThermalTake 430W PSUs at BestBuy on ebay, so I stocked up.
Anyways, I have a friend that had his main PC die on him during a thunderstorm a week or so ago. I went over there yesterday to fix it for it.
We chose to use the ThermalTake 430W, because it has a 5-year warranty, and he doesn't have need for a high-end gaming GPU at this time.
So I take out the old PSU (an EVGA 430W), and throw in this one. Plugged in the AC cord, didn't plug in anything else, really, and powered it on. Fans all started spinning, success, right? That's what I thought initially.
Then I pressed the power button once (ATX software shutdown in Windows 7), and waited for it to power off. It never did.
So I held down the power button, to force shutoff. 4 seconds, nothing. 10 seconds, nothing. WTF???
So I told my friend that the thunderstorm must have fried his mobo too.
Then I thought, maybe one of the card or drives or RAM got fried, and it's shorting out.
So I stripped it down, yes, it powers on the fans, but won't force-shutoff.
Then it finally hit me. I FORGOT TO PLUG IN THE ATX12V. Whoops!
When I did that, and powered it up, it shut off just fine again.
Put all the cards back in (except for one, that he didn't use anymore), plugged the drives in, put everything back together and hook up monitor and keyboard, and Win7 64-bit was happy again.
So, moral of the story, don't overlook plugging in the 4-pin, just because the PSU power lead is an 8-pin (4+4), and you don't see an obvious 4-pin to plug in.
Now I know how sometimes, rarely, people leave their kids in a hot car. Ugh.
I recently availed myself of some sales on EVGA 600W and ThermalTake 430W PSUs at BestBuy on ebay, so I stocked up.
Anyways, I have a friend that had his main PC die on him during a thunderstorm a week or so ago. I went over there yesterday to fix it for it.
We chose to use the ThermalTake 430W, because it has a 5-year warranty, and he doesn't have need for a high-end gaming GPU at this time.
So I take out the old PSU (an EVGA 430W), and throw in this one. Plugged in the AC cord, didn't plug in anything else, really, and powered it on. Fans all started spinning, success, right? That's what I thought initially.
Then I pressed the power button once (ATX software shutdown in Windows 7), and waited for it to power off. It never did.
So I held down the power button, to force shutoff. 4 seconds, nothing. 10 seconds, nothing. WTF???
So I told my friend that the thunderstorm must have fried his mobo too.
Then I thought, maybe one of the card or drives or RAM got fried, and it's shorting out.
So I stripped it down, yes, it powers on the fans, but won't force-shutoff.
Then it finally hit me. I FORGOT TO PLUG IN THE ATX12V. Whoops!
When I did that, and powered it up, it shut off just fine again.
Put all the cards back in (except for one, that he didn't use anymore), plugged the drives in, put everything back together and hook up monitor and keyboard, and Win7 64-bit was happy again.
So, moral of the story, don't overlook plugging in the 4-pin, just because the PSU power lead is an 8-pin (4+4), and you don't see an obvious 4-pin to plug in.
Now I know how sometimes, rarely, people leave their kids in a hot car. Ugh.
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