Some observations on power supplies

[LiamC]

Power supply weirdness

Have had two power supplies go bad on me in as many weeks. One has seen almost three years service, the other two. The first was a Jao Jye (sp??) 250W AMD approved that came with my original Slot A Athlon. The other was a Leadman 400W.

Both just died. A sharp crack -> no power.

But here is the weird bit. After the usual invectives, did my troubleshooting and isolated the p/s. I pulled them out of the boxes, took the cover off, blew out the dust, checked the fuse, put the cover back on and put them back. Both just powered up as if nothing had happened! Whilst the Leadman went bung last night, the Jao Jye went bung two or three weeks ago, and has been chugging along ever since, and this p/s is running a 1.33GHz T'bird @ 1.8V, so the current draw is high, with 2HDD's, CDROM, CDRW, GeForce Pro (original power hungry mutha), & 2 NIC's.

I wonder how many people have chucked out perfectly good power supplies without checking...

 

[Pradeep]

I got a Leadman 500W once. Lasted a couple of days and then crack, the smell of ozone, and no power. When I took the PSU out, there was something rattling inside. Managed to extract it thru one of the vent holes, looks like a piece of black plastic that had blown apart.

My recommendation: avoid.

 

[LiamC]

He he Pradeep. Bought a cheap ATX case from the computer markets/fairs a few years back for my Celeron 300A. The p/s lasted 1 day before one of the capacitors blew itself to bits quite spectacularly...

Not so cheap a buy after replacing the p/s.

 

[CougTek]

A sharp crack -> no power.

Last time it happened to me was when I kicked my Linux box out of the desk while under power (bad day on stock market). Delta PSU, not Leadman though.

I didn't know PSUs could do that without being "pro-active" about it. The few other PSUs that died on me prior to the Delta did it in silence.