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PSU gone bad?

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  • Power Supplies
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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September 3, 2011 6:17:32 AM

A couple days ago I started getting blue screens every once in a while. The information in the minidumps lead me to believe that it was hard drive related. I installed a new HD earlier today, reinstalled windows, and everything seemed okay. It started blue screening again earlier, and then had a lot of trouble booting up. I had to unplug the HD a couple times just to get the thing to post. It eventually just quit powering up. When it started to really fail it would power up for a millisecond, then die. After a couple times it just stopped coming on altogether. I tried it bare bones -- only plugging in the 20 + 4 pin connector and the 4 pin CPU one, but nothing happened


I took out the PSU and tried it in another machine that was a bit similar. Same thing happened on that computer. I put the PSU in, it started up for a millisecond, then died, and wouldn't come back on except for 2 more instances when it did the same thing (I tried that one bare bones too.) I put the regular PSU for that computer in the same way (bare bones,) and it came on like normal.


The thing that is driving me crazy is that I tried the paperclip test, and the PSU seems to activate while that is going, but not when in a system. Could it just not be able to handle any somewhat heavy load? I've used this PSU since very late in 2007, so it could just be do to age, I don't know. I did take this PSU out of my old machine and put it in my new one in March of this year, though.

More about : psu bad

a b ) Power supply
September 3, 2011 10:17:28 AM

the paper clip test only determines weather or not the PSU is completely dead, it does not test it under load, it is a near useless test. Get a new psu, dont even plug that one in again as you risk it blowing up and damaging other components.
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a b ) Power supply
September 3, 2011 10:30:17 AM

Agree with iam2thecrowe
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September 3, 2011 10:05:07 PM

Appreciate the feedback. I get really paranoid about stuff like this :ouch: 
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September 4, 2011 7:52:23 AM

I should probably also add that I didn't have anything happen while gaming on high end games. Don't know if that means anything at all.
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