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Have I got a bad/faulty power supply? "corsair TX 650"

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I've had two motherboards fail this year using the TX 650

The first one happend in the timescale of about 2 months of use (powered up nearly 24/7 apart from weekends) but that heppend after I altered settings in the MSI overclocking utility.

Symptoms - instant power down, no activity when attempt to power up. Using an MSI P67A-C43


I RMA'd the board and got a MSI P67A-G45 as a replacement. the board looked like it may have been a refurbished and/or repaired and sold as new as there was fine dust on the back of the board. During bootup it posted a "CPU failure" beep code but booted fine, this was fixed after a bios upgrade and I suspect that the CPU failure may have not been cleared from the bios from the previous user (if it was a refurb). Anyway again after around 2 months of use (powered up nearly 24/7 apart from weekends) the same thing happend only this time I was browsing the internet.

Same symptoms - instant power down, no activity when I attempt to power up. Only this time after the instant power down I turned my PSU off and I saw a blue flash though the side panel window out my corner of my eye around the area of the onboard sound and the PSU (I think there may have been a static build up around that area and when I switched the PSU off it dumped its charge).


Thanks, I would really like to get a second opinion on this! :D 

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Power supply Master

Blue flash means something just ate it, look at the board and see if anything looks cooked also smell around in that general area, that should help you determine if it was the board or PSU that blew. Since you already killed a board with that PSU its likely bad and needs to be RMA'd or just replaced, if it smells of something horrible it definitely needs to be RMA'd.
Power supply Authority

mikes1992 said:
Same symptoms - instant power down, no activity when I attempt to power up. Only this time after the instant power down I turned my PSU off and I saw a blue flash though the side panel window out my corner of my eye around the area of the onboard sound and the PSU (I think there may have been a static build up around that area and when I switched the PSU off it dumped its charge).

Your PSU is screwed to your PC's case, it is connected to the motherboard through the 20/24-pin and 4/8-pin ATX12V connectors, the motherboard is also grounded through its brass stand-offs so it is extremely unlikely that whatever you saw was static. Not to mention that most static discharges are barely visible even when you are looking directly at them.

Since what you saw was bright enough to illuminate a corner of your case, what you saw was most likely a medium/high-current electrical arc such as a glass-tube fuse blowing up.
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When I get the parts (motherboard and PSU) RMA'd I'm going to get a surge protector plug which should hopefully reduce the risk of this happening again.

I've also asked the people at ballicom if they'd test the PSU and see if there is any instability's, like voltage drop and/or bad voltage ripple (which is heard is normally responsible for killing hardware). Is there a test for how well PSUs can handle a surge? I think I may of actually had a surge of some kind because my sound system had been reset and I had to set it back up (which normally only happens if it has been reset)

I'm thinking about buying a Monster HDP 750G Powercenter surge protector. I've just found one reduced from £80 to £35. Anybody got any knowledge about Surge protection? Apparently it also filters out noise and stabilises voltage fluctuation.

The only feature I'm not too keen on is that it has specified slots for components and senses if the TV is turned off and powers down the other related equipment specified on the plug... this doesn't seem very practical since my other equipment will be my PC, sound system and 2 external HDDs and I sometimes turn off my monitor/TV to listen to podcasts... I could always plug my computer into the TV slot though, it seems good that my HDDs would power down as well. would this work ok? it's not like the plugs are limited to power draw based on there specification for this feature right? I wouldn't be surprised if the TV outlet had better regulation anyway... since TVs are generally more sensitive to instability's with power (assuming they are individually regulated, which I doubt).


Thanks anyway.
Power supply Authority

The surge suppression and filtering on UPSes and power bars are usually wired directly at the point where the cord enters the power bar/UPS enclosure and is shared by all jacks on the power bar, there is no jack with 'better protection'.

For bars/UPS with 'master' jack that automatically turns off 'slave' jacks when the master load is in a low power state, those are intended to use exactly as you said: plug the PC in the master jack and all the devices you want to turn off with the PC (LCDs dedicated to that PC, USB hubs, external HDDs, etc.) in slave jacks.

InvalidError said:
The surge suppression and filtering on UPSes and power bars are usually wired directly at the point where the cord enters the power bar/UPS enclosure and is shared by all jacks on the power bar, there is no jack with 'better protection'.

For bars/UPS with 'master' jack that automatically turns off 'slave' jacks when the master load is in a low power state, those are intended to use exactly as you said: plug the PC in the master jack and all the devices you want to turn off with the PC (LCDs dedicated to that PC, USB hubs, external HDDs, etc.) in slave jacks.


Thanks for the reply InvalidError, So do you think it is a good idea to buy a power management/surge protector? Even if my PSU is the fault I'm sure the benefits of owning one of these is worth while anyway.
Power supply Authority

mikes1992 said:
So do you think it is a good idea to buy a power management/surge protector?

Anything of reasonable quality is usually better than nothing. At $23 (promo) on Amazon.com , the HDP650 is a surprisingly reasonably priced Monster product.
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