Is my PSU going bye bye?

Recently, probably in the past 4 weeks, my computer is having more and more trouble booting up. Now its a pain in the butt to get it to start up. At first it would just start up and then halfway through the optical drive boot check it would die and turn off. Now right when i hit the power switch, it turns on, the lower optical drive lights up and then it dies. I actually have to turn the power supply itself on and off to get it to boot. That means i do it over and over again until i get lucky.

I usually spend a quality time of about 5-10 minutes just to get lucky, its so annoying when you have a huge 2500 paper due the next day or some other thing like that to do.

I know its not grounded or anything like that, i doubt its a bios setting, and nothing is overclocked. The power supply is an Enermax 431 Watt Whisper and it is more than enough for my system, its a custom P4 Northwood with pretty new stuff in it. The computer runs fine in any game i play at max settings, like freelancer and elite force II, it can also restart and boot up. Its just the cold boots its having trouble with. I have no clue what to do or how to fix it. I read the FAQ's and did searches but couldnt find anything related to my prob. Any help and suggestions would be appreciated.

No, i doubt theres a power defect in the northwood boards,we just have cursed PSU's, mine is an 850E chipset board and it worked fine for 5 months, now its havin serious problems starting up. The LED on the mainboard sometimes goes off and wont turn back on until i hit the power button, my wireless network cards LED stays constant most of the time though, so i dont know whats going on. I just dont get why the computer runs fine after i go through the hassel of turning it on and booting it first. It could be the power supply and it sounds like it is, i just dont want to order another one until im sure that this one is dead, or dying. To me, it looks like the computer isnt getting nearly enough power to boot up right, then it randomly will, this I dont get.

Enermax does makes great power supplies, i was told either them or Antec. Im sure yours will be fine after you get a new one.

If you're considering switching brands, I recommend the Fortron 400W unit Tom tested. It has a higher max output than the Enermax 431W. But since the 530W Fortron is only a little more expensive than the 400W at Newegg ($11 I think), you might consider going "overkill" for little extra cash.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

I think you might have a weak supply. No company is perfect, but you could buy a Fortron cheap and recouperate your money by selling the replacement Enermax, whenever it gets there...

Anyway, you have to be carefull with Newegg, as they DON'T tell you which power supplies use 24-pin server type ATX plugs and which use standard 20-pin PC power plugs. I accidently recommended a server supply once, OUCH, so then I looked at Newegg's description and here's what I found:

The 24-pin power supply in question said it was compatable with a couple Tyan server boards. I went to Tyan's site and saw no description of the ATX power connector, so I looked at the picture and counted 2 rows of 12 pins!

So look at their recommendations, if they say "compatable with Tyan...(some server board for dual AMD processors), what they aren't saying is "does not fit standard 20-pin ATX boards".

The ones I remember being "not described as Tyan server board compatable" are the 400 and 530 watt units.

Fortron's ratings are not peak, but 70% of peak, which is why you get "more power" for the same power rating.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>