This has happened once before. Last night, it was raining fairly heavily, and there was quite a bit of lightning as well. Nice time to disconnect all the electronics from the wall, in case of a lightning strike, right? I mean, I have a surge suppressor (whose "surge" light is still on, therefore I *think* it's still working), and a UPS (for short power outages), but there's no point in using up the surge suppression in either of those devices if I don't need the computer on anyway. So I turned everything off -- shut down the machine, then killed the power switch on the PSU, then turned the UPS off, then unplugged it from the surge suppressor and turned the suppressor off as well.
Today, I go to turn everything back on (turn on the surge suppressor, verify that the "ground" and "surge" lights are both still lit, plug the UPS back in, turn it on and wait for it to do the self-test that it does on power-up, then turn the switch back on on the PSU, and hit the machine's power button) -- and I get nothing. The machine powers up for about a half second, then the PSU decides "I'm overloaded!!!" (or something like that) and powers back off. SIGH.
The last time this happened (same kind of thing, although I didn't unplug the UPS), it didn't start working correctly again until I got a completely new PSU (under warranty -- it's made by BFG, and they provide a lifetime warranty on them). They tried to repair it a few times (since it had the same serial # when I got it back), and it never worked right. So what I'm thinking is, maybe attempt a different PSU (and perhaps look into a different UPS as well -- it's possible that on startup, it's sending some kind of strange AC noise down the power line that's somehow getting through the air gap inside the switch on the PSU). But I'm not sure who makes decent PSUs. I need a fair bit of power to run three hard drives, a DVD-ROM or CD writer (depending on which of the two I have plugged in), an AMD AM2 CPU (4200, I think? it's 64-bit, in any case), and the video card (which was going to be upgraded, but I may have to put that off a bit longer now).
Anyone have any recommendations? I think the Antec TruePower series was good a few years ago, but I don't know if it still is. Then, what about resellers? I'd probably start at Newegg, though. Hmm.
Anyway, any opinions are welcome. :-) |
