Who's had catastrophic power supply failures?

[KaranG4]

I just had one a couple months ago. Rather disappointing if I may say so. I bought a 530 watt Antec powersupply to ensure nothing would ever happen and in less than a year, without overclocking or anything out of the ordinary, i started getting spikes from my mobo sensor for wattage, and they'd be jumping all over but i wasnt too concerned as the sensors sucked and my fan rpm would go to negative numbers every couple seconds. Next time i turn it on I see sparks shoot out the back. I dont worry about it because I figured, hey, Antec is a reliable company, im sure they'd give me a replacement... Sent it in and I've been waiting for a month and a half. Bad rma department, took so many phone calls in order to get ahold of the person there because they never ever answer the phone, and their business hours are inconvenient for me anyways, so if I take my time, they should answer it. Im pretty broke at this point, being a student with a pretty tough classes and no time for a job and have been without my computer for months on end

I bought a cheap achieve 550watt ps because i had heard pretty good things about it for a cheap powersupply. And with my luck, it arrives dead. So now im sending another one back to another place which is probably less reliable.

I now have a choice of buying another expensive antec product that will probably screw me over again, buy another name brand which seems like it will probably screw me over too. Or risk frying my computer with the cheaper achieve ps i *might* get back. Isn't life great?

Not to mention the, about 5, asus motherboards i had to rma on my first computer build and i just gave up on them.

Is it just me or is this industry really pretty bad, I can't believe the amount of bad luck ive had, even when ive bought all name brands, all the best stuff. It's pretty sad to see the customer service and produc quality in action for computer companies. Maybe my next computer will be a dell :frown:

 

[drewdogg808]

i've had 3 blow. first was an antec 300w 4 years ago...just had a loud pop...capacitor blew. it was plugged into a surge, but happened when i turned it on.

last 2 were recent (last fall). one was an antec 480 true blue and the replacement for it was an enermax 550 watt. both blew within a week of each other. they were connected to a 500a ups. i believe it was the power in the area or something.

 

[meanpc]

I bought 3 cheap power supplies about 6 months ago. One was dead on arrival. One went in my dad's computer and the other went in mine. About a month later, my dad's PS failed. He went to compusa and bought a new one. About 3 months later, mine failed.

3 out of 3 are now dead. I learned my lesson with cheap power supplies. The only one that was scary looking was the first one...it arced on start-up. The others just killed without much fanfare. In none of the cases was other hardware affected.

 

[bldckstark]

Antec PS on K7S5A blew up. I put the CPU in my computer (I'm no pro, I was fixing it for a friend) and burnt up all the same junk in mine as theirs. I'm not sure what went first, the CPU which caused some short back in the PS or vice versa, but we both got new CPU's, modems, PS's. I have seen several PS's die. Mostly Compaqs.

 

[Jayczar]

I also had one blow an a K7S5A but it was a cheap unit, ever since
I started buying name brand and spending a couple extra bucks
I have not had any problems, they will probably outlast everything
else in the system.

 

[phoenix79]

My Brother-in-law had a video editing system that he spent ~$6k on. Dual Athlon MP 2000+ (when they were new) Dual monitors, all the bells and whistles including a $1500 mpeg encoder card. There are 3 computers in the same room on the same circuit, one totally unprotected, one with a surge supressor, and the edit system on an APC UPS. One day my sister was working on one of the other systems when there was a power surge. The only computer to die? you guesssed it, the edit system on the UPS. After the spike, the system ran but was horridly unstable. Wound up replacing both video cards (dual monitor without a dual output card) and the PSU. The ATX connector was melted to the motherboard so that had to be replaced too. It was an ugly sight...