PSU breaks without dying
 

So my desktop has been crashing randomly for the last month or so. Doesn't happen with any consistency, sometimes it locks up after being on for days and sometimes it dies during boot. After a while it stopped booting altogether. It would turn on but it would never beep or go into the boot sequence.

So after checking a bunch of stuff, and incorrectly believeing it was the hard drive, and then the RAM and then finally I was positive the problem was the motherboard because I took everything out including the processor and turned it on and it still wasn't beeping at me.

So I ordered a new mobo, luckily it was nice and cheap because I am running an old ass AMD Athlon 1000 anyway I get the new mobo and plug everything into it and turn it on and it powers up but still won't beep or go to boot.

SO I go find my old PSU and plug it in and the fucker boots just fine! I didn't consider the PSU being the problem becuase I just got it in May and everything had power when I turned the PC on, it just wouldn't boot.

Sneaky ass broken PSU!

Faulty PSUs can cause all sorts of silly problems, yeah.

I've never had anything like this happen, usually they just die completely.

hopefully it's still under warranty and I can get it replaced, I got this PSU because it was nice and quiet.

Yeah, broken power supplies suck. They're really hard to diagnose sometimes, which is why when odd things like that start happening, I immediately suspect the power supply; although many times a power supply will kill a motherboard along with its own demise. I've replaced the power supply in my own machine twice now (without changing out any other parts).

<3 redundant server power supplies.

heh, so now I have two mobos that work decently well albiet running older chips, maybe I'll buy another processor and turn one into a fileserver eventually.

I'm quite happy because my case (a Shuttle) came with a top-notch PSU, because a high-output one can't fit in it it's just exceptionally high-quality. My old PC has a really cheap one and it cocks up in amusing and varied ways.

I love my Antec PSU. :up:

mine was a Zalman, POS.

Zalman usually make good-quality stuff. Every component in a PC can fail, though, there's just no way to guarantee quality.

indeed