Alan Grimes wrote: > The PSU is an Antec EarthWatts 750. > > Biggest hoggs outside the motherboard are the, um, er, well [nvidia 980 > gpu] and an aging Western Digital Velociraptor boot drive. There is also > a 3TB drive for all my p***, er kerbals ( Kerbal Space Program ) . > There is one optical drive and four chassis fans in the system. All fans > are operating perfectly. > > As far as I know the operating conditions for the PSU are nearly ideal.... > > I did have some noise issues with it a few years ago but it seemed to > settle down and hasn't really given me any grief since. > >
That noise could be what the problem was. Just a example. A fan's bearings starts making noise. Eventually, the bearings lock up and the noise stops. Guess what, the fan has stopped too. Of course, the noise is gone now but that doesn't mean the problem is gone does it? Odds are, some component was making noise because it was under pressure or age was catching up or whatever. When the noise stopped, it had likely stopped working at all. This sounds like a capacitor to me. They will make weird noises sometimes before they fail. I used to work on TVs a lot years ago, you know, the old tube type stuff. Anyway, those caps did all sorts of weird things. Some would swell up until they were shaped like a hot air balloon or something. Some would blow out the bottom and maybe even stink real bad. I've even seen some that blew the metal can completely off and the TV is full of that sticky paper stuff, which also stinks, and the foil part. Some just smoke and make a hissing sound, then all heck breaks out in the TV. Usually it stops filtering and the rest of the TV is now getting a unfiltered DC which is about like A/C. Some components like those tubes don't like that much. They tend to revolt. FET type components, when they go, they usually go quick, with a bit of stink or smoke. Usually. Yea, I'd be looking for a new power supply. Some of those on that last link I posted aren't that expensive. Just calculate up what power you need. I tend to add at least 50% to that, for future expansion and start up power. Doubling it wouldn't hurt. It just means your P/S is running at half power most of the time. On my current P/S, it is a 650 watt unit. According to my UPS, my entire computer system pulls about 150 watts idle and about 160 to 170 when compiling the crap out of something like GCC, Libreoffice etc. Now that includes my monitor, router, modem and speakers. If I were to guess, the puter itself only pulls around 100 to 120 watts. My power supply has some overkill issues for sure. I could likely easily use a 300 watt unit but would likely replace with a 400 watt since they are more available. Technically, I could use a 200 watt if the power supply was a well built model. As it is, my power supply likely never even gets warm. Add in that it is in a Cooler Master HAF-932 case and I'm sure the fan gets bored. The key thing on power supplies. If you are going to buy cheap, buy big. Cheapos tend to overrate themselves, sometimes a LOT. If you buy a well known and well tested brand, it will likely deliver what it claims and you can pick closer to your actual ratings. Of course, that cheapo P/S will likely fail you at some point. That means risking losing a lot more than just the P/S too. It could mean a new CPU, mobo, memory and whatever else it takes with it. When cutting costs, protection is one place to do it and by the time you realize it, it's to late. I've bought cases with P/Ss built in. They get removed and disassembled for little junky projects. I mostly get heat sinks and such since most of the components aren't reliable anyway. Hope you get this fixed soon. Dale :-) :-)
