Aspire X1420 power supply nightmare

rishooty

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Jun 14, 2010
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Hi, I've only posted here a couple times but for the issues that have completely stumped me this community has pulled through.

So my brother wanted to get a prebuilt pc and build on top of it. He saw the acer aspire X1420 with pretty good specs for real cheap. When it arrived, we realized that we neglected the fact that it was miniITX.

So we put it in his old case and hooked it up to his larger power supply of 500w that he had already. Although micro ATX, it accommodated smaller boards just fine. It worked perfectly fine for a couple weeks, and then it failed to turn on. Thinking it was the power switch, we got a new one. Then i swapped out the power supply and realized that it worked again.

Still wanting to install his video card, we got another 600w psu which also worked for about a month and failed. We repeated the same process, tried a new power switch and swapped out the psu with my backup and it once again proved to be the psu failing.

He returns it to micro center, gets a new(different) one from warranty, and now it won't even start period. Then i see a pattern. The original ITX psu had a 250w standard power supply. My backup is also a 250w standard thats 7 years old.

So my point and question after all that nonsense, is that is it possible for a motherboard to have a wattage limit(google says no so far) or for motherboards to downright kill/refuse to use power supplies? Seems to only like 250s 0.o

For all of these, i have done the paperclip test and for the original 500w psu i've tested it on anothe machine to no success. This happens regardless of the video card's presence. Finding that one extremely odd issue that i can't fix bothers me, so i would much appriciate it :p
 
Solution
YOu wont get any help without posting specs on the PC. 250w PSU is very very low and id be surprise if it powered anything with a decent GPU. Most likely you have a garbage PSUs that you are using.

rishooty

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Jun 14, 2010
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My apologies, i figured Acer Aspire X1420 would be self explanatory through google but here you go: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1709367&CatId=4928

Also you misread, we never attempted to do anything with a video card with a 250. We're concerned about the computer turning on period, this has little to do with the video card. Its just the reason why we want to upgrade.

[and yeah i told him to get a good rated on newegg or tiger, but he was impaitient :/]
 
Be that as it may, you are forcing people to google it, we arent here to do your work for you. We are here to help you with advice. There are stickies on the top of each forum page, follow the stickies and im sure people will take time out of the lives to help you.
 

rishooty

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Jun 14, 2010
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Yeah you know what... I've just been over thinking it. I refused to believe that 3 different power supplies in a row failed so I just came up with every other possible cause. I guess its true though, #1 lived out its lifespan #2 and #3 were just cheap crap from micro center.
So lesson learned, always buy your cheaper psus online with 5/5 ratings regardless of how impatient the client is. Selecting best answer and ending. Thanks for the bit of common sense that eluded me anyway vrumor :p.