[GLLUG] Holy Crap, My power-supply broke.

[Richard Houser]

Michael Rudas wrote:
> Steven Sayers wrote:
> 
> Michael Rudas wrote:
> 
>>> Steven Sayers wrote:
> 
>>>> It was working , now it does not. When I try and turn on the computer it
>>>> moves the fan a half of an inch then stops...
> 
>>> Yup, a bad power supply is by FAR the most likely problem-- usually
>>> caused by bad electrolytic capacitors.  Fortunately, a new P/S is
>>> relatively cheap these days-- a decent-quality 350 watt supply should
>>> set you back under $40--

Buy a good $70-80 high-efficiency one if you plan to leave this running 
a lot.  The power savings will get you the $30 back after a couple 
years, plus you will have more upgrade capacity.  Also, the good ones 
don't fail anywhere near the frequency of the lower end ones, plus they 
are easier on your other components.

>> Yeah when I built this computer the case came with a 350 watt power supply.
> 
> If it was a cheap case, the power supply was cheap, too.
> 
>> Off-topic is they have a 1100 watt power supply. What in the world is that
>> for and do standard plugs even get that much?

When you think about it 10 amps isn't that much.  My cheep vacuum 
cleaner pulls 12 amps and the UPS my server is plugged into puts out 
about the same.

> By the time you add a pair of high-end graphics cards (SLI), a
> high-end processor (high clock speed, multi-core), and lots of
> hard-drive capacity  (like a RAID configuration), it's possible to
> push average power consumption to 600W or more.  An 1100W supply is a
> BIT over the top, but the more margin, the better-- as long as the P/S
> is efficient and has a low power factor.
> 
> High-power supplies have more drive connectors-- and usually have
> multiple +12V supplies internally to split up the load.  Mass
> quantities of hard drives draw a LOT of peak current when they first
> start up...

I have a high efficiency (95%+) Antec 600 watt SLI power supply (maybe 
it was a 500) with three +12 rails.  It's a very nice PS, but with the 
high efficiency rating, the most I've ever managed to pull from it 
(measured from the wall) was around 125 watts with an AMD X2 3800, two 
SATA 160GB drives, a  20X DVD-Burner, a few USB flash sticks, several 
80mm case fans, a 92mm case fan, 80mm CPU fan, a single nVidia 7950 
PCI-E, 2GB DDR2.  With the load on the machine, basically everything was 
pegged except the graphics card (didn't have anything good to stress 
that subsystem at the time, so I just gave it a dozen instances of 
glxgears).  I now have a couple more hard disks and an MPEG encoder 
card, but I doubt I run anywhere near 160 watts peak.  For the most 
part, anything over about 700 is a case of "my PS is bigger than your 
PS".  If you were to measure that, you probably can't pull over 850 tops 
out of it (where mine is known to pull in excess of the rating).

> -- Mikey
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