Over the past 6 months or so, I've been having problems with my power supply. About 3-4 times during this period I've had power supplies go and blow up on me, with the resulting power surge frying my hard drive. I get the power supplies from a local Computer Parts and Repair shop (a VERY reputable one), and they always replace my nuked ones for free.
Oh, and I use 'Achieve' 300W Power Supplies for my AMD 1.3 Ghz/256MB SDRAM/etc. machine.
Well, 3 months ago (as of yesterday) I bought what I thought was my last of these power supplies. Yesterday, though... the anniversary of my 3 months with my power supply... everything went down the tube.
I was playing Darkspace online (www.darkspace.net) when all of a sudden the monitor went black and the power went off all at once.
Then the CD-ROM door popped out.
Then... POP! POP! POP!... and an acrid scent wafted up from the computer. I'm familiar with it now as the scent of a dead power supply. Odds are my HD is fried too.
Anyways... I need help. What the heck is causing this, and what can I do? Is it the power supply, or my system causing the problems? I want to stop buying hard drives!! Help!
Depending on your system configuration (Video Card, HDD, CDRW etc...), the power supply you currently have might be too small, you might try getting a better (more power) one just to see if that makes any difference (and it might) also, please keep in mind that PSU are a very important part of your PC (as you might have noticed ) so do not go cheap on them.
If it turns out that a better supply doesn't help, you might look into UPS's. I swear by them and have them on all of my machines.
After I installed my first UPS I realized how necessary they are in my case as the cheap power quality monitor is constantly reminding me with a beep of how terrible my local grid really is.
First of all, get better power supplies, Newegg carries a top quality Fortron 350W unit for $36 that will outpower most 400W units and last longer. Second, consider a UPS to provide better protection against spikes.
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As has been said, it is possible that your hardware just sucks up too much juice. A better power supply certainly couldn't hurt.
Why I really replied though was to fully I agree with everyone about the UPS and to further state that if you get one to make sure that it has AVR.
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Soymilk. I was raised on the stuff.
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Soy.
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) so do not go cheap on them.
