"Don White" wrote in message
...

"HK" wrote in message
...
Eisboch wrote:
"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:13:26 -0500, "D.Duck" wrote:

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
news On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:47:36 -0500, Gene Kearns
wrote:

On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:49:28 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing penned the
following well considered thoughts to the readers of rec.boats:

|Crap - the PS went on the main computer.
|
|I'm telling you, the next computer is going to be a Mac.
|
|F'in PCs.

Lemme guess...... an E-machine....
Please - built by me.

I called my brother who has several and he said he goes through one
or
two a month.

This one was a 500 watt PS, but it's cheap - I just took it apart -
all potted, nothing fused, etc.
Educated guess, an electrolytic capacitor failed.
Probably. The machine boots fine, but only lasts for five minutes
then goes stone cold dead.

I took the PS apart - everything potted which I suppose I should have
suspected so you can't really tell if anything is cooked by looking. I
hooked it up to AC and tested the loads - crapped out in less than
five minutes. Held the loads fine up to failure though. Interesting.

So the chore for tomorrow is get a new power supply.

I talked to my brother tonight about it - he's got 800 or so PCs under
his umbrella at the health centers he supports. He said that over the
past three years or so, he's noticing more and more power supply's
just crapping out. He stocks them now that money is tighter - can't
just pull out the goodies and buy a new computer like he used to. He
also used to spec out 500 watt supplies - now he specs out 750 to slow
the rate of attrition down.

Based on what I see with this bad one, he's right.


You think it's because of people loading up their computers with USB
powered devices?
I saw a platform with two fans built into it the other day at Best Buy
or some store like that. You're supposed to place your laptop on it and
the fans in the platform are supposed to help cool the computer. But,
it's USB powered, so whatever energy is used by the two fans is provided
by the computer. Doesn't make sense.

Eisboch


I have three fans inside my current desktop PC box, in addition to the
CPU fan, the power supply fan and the video card fan. Also, each of the
two hard drives in the box have their own fans. That's a total of eight
fans - damned thing ought to be able to levitate on its own.

My SATA drive box also has a fan.

I wonder about your point there, too...that all these fans are using
energy the computer's power supply has to provide. But what the hell...I
am just an English major.

Interesting, all this talk of power supplies.
My son went out yesterday and bought a new 'quiet' power supply and an
insulated CPU case because he found his computer too noisy down in his
bedroom.
He installed both parts and claims the noise level has dropped noticeably.
I wondered if this insulated case would cause overheating inside the box
but he says he now has more cooling fans than before. I'll keep an eye
on it.

There are utilities available to monitor case ambient and CPU temperatures.
You may want to try this one:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...-Monitor.shtml