On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 10:26:42PM -0600, Cybe R. Wizard wrote: > Marc Shapiro <mshapiro_42@yahoo.com> said: > > I can claim firsthand experience with exactly that. Box overheated. > > Fried capacitors. Required new motherboard and CPU. Fortunately I > > was able to get a similar MB, only slight upgrade, so I was able to > > use my old memory and didn't have to replace that, too. If the > > problem is the power supply (mine was) it is much cheaper to replace > > the PS now than the MB in a few weeks. Other fans and heatsinks are > > still less expensive than a new CPU (and, possibly, MB). > > I had much the same experience but my loss was total. That brings up > the question of how to tell if the PS is going out. My motherboard had > fan, temp and voltage sensors that I /finally/ got working but the PS > didn't seem to be represented in those. Are there physical hints > pre-death (enough pre-death for box salvage) for a power supply? I've had a couple desktop psu's fail. symptoms have been intermittent hard-locks, out-of-spec voltages, difficulty when rebooting (such as power leds come on, but no POST) etc. Nothing definitive, but the problems have gone away with a new power supply. My understanding is that psu's are the most failure prone item in a computer. I always consider them first if I'm having any sort of difficult-to-diagnose problem. .02 A
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature