Tag Archives: power supply

forced upgrade cycle, how bored must I be?

2008.02.01 – 2:13 pm PST

R.I.P 2006-2008 - 2nd hand Pentium 4 2.4Ghz CPU and ASUS Motherboard.

This morning I awoke to the peculiar sounds of my home server turning on and off rapidly. I didn’t have time to do any digging into the issue before physical therapy so I just flipped the power switch off. When I got home, fearing that my somewhat new and very expensive Antec super efficient power supply had failed, I got out my trusty power supply tester. Luckily the tester showed everything was fine, which means it’s the motherboard. *sigh* more rubbish. I guess I need to start shopping for a new(to me) one. It is about that time when all my computers start to walk off the cliff like lemmings. Hopefully I can salvage the RAM to sell and or determine if the CPU is still good and reincarnate the system again. Maybe it’s time I round up all the hardware I have and just get rid of it all in order to buy brand new stuff and make it a complete upgrade cycle. With hard drive density soaring and Moore’s law continuing to show no mercy, my aged technology is whooping my ass. The most rugged piece of technology I own is a 15″ Mag Technology DX1595 Color Monitor which I purchased in 1996. 12 years isn’t bad. Hopefully this year I will replace it with a LCD.  Who can say they’ve had a piece of technology for that long which still works.  I’d like to know.

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power supply woes.

2006.10.13 – 6:46 pm PDT

So yea, my server has been down effectively since Saturday.  This means that my blog/website has been offline.
Well, last weekend the power supply in my server decided to get really hot and die.  On Sunday, I replaced it with one from another computer, and it met an untimely hot death also.  So Monday I ordered a new expensive (better?) power supply, an Antec TPII-550, which got here today.  The ones I had been using before were el cheapo Chiefmax 650 watt, of which I have gone through about 4 of them in the last year, 3 in just my server.  I know the load can’t be that much in my server, and yet it eats power supplies like candy.  Each one of the dead power supplies I have taken apart, and looked at them closely to see what’s going on.  Wow, they are just burning up with heat, rosin is just all over, and solder seems to have bridged some parts of the breadboard.  One of the big capacitors in the supply was completely de-soldered and rattling around inside the case upon remove from the computer.  Good thing I didn’t try to turn it on for shits and giggles before I installed the Antec.
  Things seem fine so far.  Oh yea, and when I got the new Antec P/S there is just a huge ugly rats nest of cables that come out of the thing, it took me 20 minutes just to get them somewhat untangeled.  Also not to mention I don’t even need half of the wires that come out of the thing, so they are cable tied and tucked away, hopefuly not restricting too much airflow.  I need a modular power supply.
EDIT: Oh yea, the Antec has an 80,000 hour MTBF.  The Chiefmax has none.
[tags]power, downtime, power_supply, ranting[/tags]

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another one bites the dust.

2006.05.21 – 6:07 am PDT

well the 650W power supply in my server went pop last night. my dad smelled something burning, and i wasn’t at home. he called me, and while he was on the phone i heard a nice pop. i had him shut everything down for safety. when i got home, i smelled around, and it was my server that stunk. i hooked up my power supply tester, flipped the switch, and the lights on the tester flashed on quickly and then stayed off. the power supply on the other hand got nice and warm so i turned it off. now to find another power supply. i think the power here is “dirty” compared to what my computers used to run off. i need some UPS’/power conditioners again.

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Bad Behavior has blocked 1534 access attempts in the last 7 days.

>>>>>>> .r246