On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 08:36:47AM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: > On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 10:31:30PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 05:35:27PM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote: > > > Is the PSU really more failure prone than any other component? > > > > it is my understanding, having long ago lost the source, that the PSU > > is the *most* failure prone item. At least in consumer grade > > stuff. But it is largely overlooked and probably goes undiagnosed, or > > misdiagnosed as mobo issues etc. I do know that the two times I've > > taken a box into a professional for diagnosing, the first thing they > > test is the PSU. > > > > Anecdotaly, I lose way more PSU's than anything else. Maybe I've got > > bad power and in fact, I've not lost one on a UPS... hmmm... > > I have my whole setup protected with a Panamax power bar that protects > all cables (power, phone, ethernet, antenna to TV and sterio [connected > to the computer via audio cable]) so that there is one single reference > ground. Its power is 50' away from the service entrance and that > entrance is protected with a panamax entrance protector. I couldn't > afford that _and_ a UPS so I figured that it was more important. we sometimes have spotty power here and a lot of it is underground meaning it doesn't get upgraded... well, ever, I guess. Anyway, I suspect its a culprit in my continued power supply failures. I think I've lost 4 power supplies in my house over 5 years (multiple machines) and a couple at work. I used to see my POS computers lock up or crash randomly too. Throwing them on UPS's solved that problem. And As I've migrated my systems at hoem onto UPS I've seen no more problems here either. Of course, it could be that I' ve put in higher quality replacement PSU's too. ON a side note, have you noticed that its hard to actually find useful replacement PSU's? My local shops carry all kinds of 5&600 watt PSU's, but none of them put out enough power on the right combinations of rails to support my stuff. I've had to replace a couple of them with generic OEM style psu's. An example would be doing the math on my hard-drive/peripheral load on one of my boxes, I determined that I needed X watts on the 12 volt rail. I"m standing in CompUSA (ugh, emergency) looking at rack after rack of PSU all of which offer .75X watts on the 12 volt rail, no matter how "beefy" these PSU's claim to be. They've put all the power in different places. I ended up with a 375 watt compusa brand psu because it put the power int he right places. I suppose that's what I get for putting a 4 disk raid array in a consumer grade box... The guy next to me was scratching his head asking how to figure out which PSU to buy, and I asked him what hardware he had to run off it... he didn't know, so he bought the biggest one... heh. A
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