# PSU Concerns



## jechtsphere (Jan 25, 2008)

Hey guys,

Having a bit of an issue here. I've recently ran into an awkward situation with my system. I'm running a simple ASUS mobo with a Celeron 2.93GHz processor, 2GB DDR Corsair, nVidia GeForce 7600 GS/OC (more on this later). Now, a bit of history.

A few months back I was running a 400w Raptop PSU and had been since the date I built the system. At this time I was running an nVidia GeForce 5500 FX for a video card. Then suddenly, with no apparent changes to the system that I can recall, I began having issues turning the system on. It would go through the load-up phase, show the graphics card information, motherboard loading screen, then A) it would reboot immediately and run that same course repeatedly B) it would load to a screen indicating "CPU is unworkable or has been changed" Example:









So I became frustrated, tried loading with only HDD reading, with only DVD drive reading, etc., to see what was causing the issue. Eventually I had a friend who's pretty good with electronics (circuit wise, as far as computing goes in general I feel superior, but I figured if it was an issue with the wattage, etc., then he'd be my guy). Anyhow, he ended up resolving it for me over the weekend by putting in another PSU and changing something with my processor output. Fine by me, the system ran and I was back in business. Fast forward.

Within the last couple months I bought an nVidia GeForce 7600 GS/OC, mostly for purpose of improving my play in Hellgate: London. That worked fine, or so I thought. Now, Hellgate: London was having issues world-wide with resets, hangs, etc. so I thought nothing of it when my system would freeze or the game would crash, etc. because this was something happening to others. What I didn't consider, however, that the system would freeze on me more often than say my friend who was running an bit of a lesser system. Now, when I say freeze I mean to the point of having to restart the system. I stopped playing Hellgate and began playing WoW again and oddly enough, I began having freezing and resets in WoW. Now, WoW is a big game but not quite as system intensive as Hellgate, so these random resets made me think overheating. I began tracking my temps with SpeedFan program and it turns out I'm not overheating at all. However, my system was still resetting itself sporadically.

Then I begin smelling the ominous melting plastic smell; ok, the PSU is burning out. Makes sense because it turns out it was a 250w and my new GFX card could, would, and most likely did create the beginning of the end for it. That's fine, so I throw my old PSU back in to see if, by any chance, it would work with my new setup. No, it wouldn't even give me any display whatsoever. So I swapped out the graphics card for the old one I was running and low and behold, the exact same issue I was having with that PSU in the first place began happening; load graphics card info window, load mobo info window, then display the "CPU is unworkable or has been changed" message.

Okay, enough of a novel of a history lesson, here's the questions. Is it more than likely just the addition of a far more powerful gfx card that cooked the 250w PSU (omgwtf was I running that for? should've checked it ages ago) and that the original 400w Raptor may have just been an early aged defect PSU; OR could my setup be cooking PSUs? Now, keep in mind, the Raptop never burnt out to the point of making any smells or anything, it just began not willing to load my computer.

I guess what I'm wondering here is has anyone heard of anything like this before? I'm having a friend come over and test his PSU in my system tomorrow (hopefully) so I don't have to go possibly waste money on a new one and have it be the same issue. I'll update here with the results if anybody is interested. 

Thanks to anybody who has made it this far!


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## magnethead (Mar 18, 2006)

old one probably only has a 15 amp 12V rail, typical of cheap high wattage older PSUs. New one, though low wattage, has a high amp 12V rail, but starves the 5 volt line. 

Ever heard the term overbuilding?


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## jechtsphere (Jan 25, 2008)

Could you break that down for me? Like I said when it comes to the circuitry, I'm lost as hell.


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## Tumbleweed36 (May 14, 2005)

Basic statement and interpretation of above thread by magnethead: 

If you put too much load on a cheap or underpowered power supply, it won't work properly and can even burn out other components of your rig. Sounds like you may be there now with either other components being fried and/or a power supply issue. The only way to see what happens is to buy a much more powerful and better name power supply and see if anything else in there is toast now.


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