PSU dead?

[Jeffers]

I've had my PC shut down for a week while I've been away and on returning I find I've got a dead rig. I suspect power supply, I'm going to check it out today.

I wondered if anyone had any recommendations as to the best/most reliable make of PSU if (as I suspect) I have to replace it.

I've got a 750 Watt Thermaltake in at the moment and it's coming up to three years old. I've recently beefed up my graphics with a GTX460 but I thought that my supply should be able to take it, maybe not? Fairly standard hardware otherwise, Intel i920 CPU, 6 Gb ram and a couple of 500GB hard drives.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, this Netbook I'm using seems rather limited compared to my normal PC!

And, of course, I can't crunch!

[Temujin]

I've got a GTX460 running in a Dell 400w (which I accept may be pushing things a bit), so I think 750w is plenty.
The only thing I would recommend would be to stay clear of OCZ power supplies, I've had a 75% failure rate with the 4 I bought.

And, your dead PSU may have a lifetime guarantee, so check your invoice if you still have it

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi,

I've had similar issues with the standard type of PSU that came with a couple of my cases....

A couple of years ago, Maplin were doing some deals on X-Power PSU's, which have worked well....

And about a month or so ago, another of my PSU's failed and Maplins had a deal on a 580W "G7" PSU for about £30.....that has worked very well (and much more quietly) on my Quad-core PC.....

The big issue with most PSU's is that they produce multiple different voltages, and if one fails, then the PC might not boot, though you might be able to get into the BIOS and see which voltage is low (or absent).....or use an external DVM to check the volts... but be careful....!!

regards
Tim

[Jeffers]

Fixed it

As I suspected, the PSU was duff. Replaced it with a Corsair HX750W from CCL, who are local to me. It's got a 7 year warranty so I should be OK.

Back to crunching!

I'm a bit disappointed with the failed PSU. I got this rig built by Dino PC and got them to upgrade the PSU from the standard one they planned to fit. It is, of course, just out of warranty!

[galacticminor]

Hi,
 750w will be more than sufficient for what you are running. You could step it up to SLi on that power supply without breaking a sweat. Always good to have too much rather than not enough though . As a rule of thumb, stick to a branded power supply. Corsair is great, you won't have any issues with them. There was an article in overclockers magazine a few weeks back warning about cheap power supplies. Basically its possible to advertise a power supply as a much higher rating than it really is, and many of the cheap £20-30 power supplies do exactly that.

-Andrew

[Jeffers]

Hi,
 750w will be more than sufficient for what you are running. You could step it up to SLi on that power supply without breaking a sweat. Always good to have too much rather than not enough though . As a rule of thumb, stick to a branded power supply. Corsair is great, you won't have any issues with them. There was an article in overclockers magazine a few weeks back warning about cheap power supplies. Basically its possible to advertise a power supply as a much higher rating than it really is, and many of the cheap £20-30 power supplies do exactly that.

-Andrew

No problems so far! I like having the spare capacity for possible future upgrades....