Power Supply Reliability
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Posted by keith bowers on May 22, 2006, 8:54 pm
Please log in for more thread options The machine is a few years old. Intel CA810e motherboard "APower" 450 watt 12v ATXINTEL P4 192Meg Ram Samsung 6.4 GB HDD 52x CDROM Floppy XP Home (I'm told) The power supply was replaced earlier this spring. The machine died again about two months later. The supply date code is 0905. I set it up on the bench and pressed the start button. Surprise, the machine started to boot. With the small RAM I expected the process to take some time, so I moved on to another task. I came back a few minutes later to find a blank monitor and no disk or fan sounds. I opened the case and the "Disable" LED near the power connector was lit. I checked the "Power Good" line on the power connector with a DVM and it goes low when the start button is pressed. The +5 'blips' slightly above zero when the start button is pressed. I plugged the supply into another motherboard and still had no output. Does the CS810e have a history of cooking power supplies? I'm not famaliar with the APower brand; good stuff or junk? Is it worth replacing the power supply again? Thanks. -- Keith Bowers - Thomasville, NC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by kony on May 22, 2006, 10:10 pm
Please log in for more thread options APower is a junk generic power supply, on a more modern system it would be a likely culprit. However, an old i810 based board necessarily uses far less power than a modern one, so even derating the power supply it should have still sufficed unless it had an inherant flaw. >
>I set it up on the bench and pressed the start button. Surprise, the >machine started to boot. With the small RAM I expected the process to >take some time, so I moved on to another task. I came back a few >minutes later to find a blank monitor and no disk or fan sounds. You should have tried it again and noted where it stopped. This could easily be a video driver problem or something similar, not a hardware problem at all. >
>I opened the case and the "Disable" LED near the power connector was lit. I suspect you mean an ATX power led? Look again, the word disable may correspond to something else (like a jumper) in the vicinity. Perhaps it is "disable" but I've seen a lot of 810 boards and none had that function LED. >I checked the "Power Good" line on the power connector with a DVM and it
>goes low when the start button is pressed. The +5 'blips' slightly above >zero when the start button is pressed. Forget about power good, with the system "off" but plugged into ac, measure 5VSB and PS_On (to gnd of course). Then turn system on and note 3V, 5V, and 12V. >
>I plugged the supply into another motherboard and still had no output. No output means what exactly? If you mean Power Good, forget about Power Good. >
>Does the CS810e have a history of cooking power supplies? No, but it doesn't rule out the board. Inspect it, particularly the capacitors. Disconnect supply from everything but a hard drive then use a jumper wire (paperclip, whatever) to short PS-On (pin 14, usually green wire) to Ground, at which point the PSU should turn on fan spins, HDD spins, and relatively close voltage on the 3, 5, 12V rails. Keeping in mind by "3" I mean 3.3. If you are ambitious, open the power supply and inspect it, after leaving unplugged from AC for a few minutes. >
>I'm not famaliar with the APower brand; good stuff or junk? > >Is it worth replacing the power supply again? You'll have to ask the owner if it was fast enough for their needs... at any time a person always has to choose to spend less to keep an old box running or more to start over with a new system or at least major component changes. I would think that system unsuited for it's purpose since WinXP alone can gobble up over 192MB of memory with ease. If it has integrated video, XP's extravagat use of memory is further hampered by the video memory bandwidth, unless it is one of the rarer boards that happens to have a discrete video memory cache (usually the boards have spots for memory soldered onto them, two chips IIRC, but the memory is not installed to save (maybe $8 at that time). Watch the system booting again and monitor voltages. Try Windows Safe Mode if windows begins loading. If it seems to always make it to an attempt to load windows, test with something else such as Memtest86+, see if it will run that stabily for a few hours. If you decide to replace the PSU, you might find a Sparkle 250-300W for about $20, or really for that system just about anything would work unless it has a power hungry video card installed that you forgot to mention. Many of them ran with little 100-200W mATX supplies. If you had a spare PSU, you might go ahead and try it, then contact owner to find out if now is the right time to buy a newer system instead of pouring more $ into it... but then again if all they do is email/office/web, it could still be cost effective to buy a PSU, or even motherboard since some hunting can usually find an old board like that at a surplus/salvage type 'site for under $30. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by keith bowers on May 23, 2006, 11:53 am
Please log in for more thread options kony wrote:
> On Mon, 22 May 2006 20:54:34 -0400, keith bowers
> >>I promised to check out a machine for a friend. She said it was dead.
>>The machine is a few years old. >> Intel CA810e motherboard >> "APower" 450 watt 12v ATXINTEL P4 >> 192Meg Ram >> Samsung 6.4 GB HDD >> 52x CDROM >> Floppy >> XP Home (I'm told) >> >>The power supply was replaced earlier this spring. The machine died >>again about two months later. The supply date code is 0905. >
<snip> >>I set it up on the bench and pressed the start button. Surprise, the
>>machine started to boot. With the small RAM I expected the process to >>take some time, so I moved on to another task. I came back a few >>minutes later to find a blank monitor and no disk or fan sounds. >
It stopped before it started. Nothing happens now, no fans, no disk
> You should have tried it again and noted where it stopped. activity, nothing except that one LED. Note: NO +5 on a known good, but old, motherboard. Guess I will let her check with whover put the APower in, it may stil be in warranty. If that fails it's surgery time 8o( -- Keith Bowers - Thomasville, NC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Bill Hanna on June 2, 2006, 8:56 am
Please log in for more thread options On Mon, 22 May 2006 22:10:10 -0400, While running hot, kony
. >set it up on the bench and pressed the start button. Surprise, the
>>machine started to boot. With the small RAM I expected the process to
>>take some time, so I moved on to another task. I came back a few >>minutes later to find a blank monitor and no disk or fan sounds. >
>You should have tried it again and noted where it stopped. >This could easily be a video driver problem or something >similar, not a hardware problem at all. Are you telling me that a bad video driver can shut down pwr supply (fans and all)? -- Bill To sleep- perchance to dream of puppies. -- WT Hanna --- | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by kony on June 2, 2006, 9:57 am
Please log in for more thread options On Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:56:30 -0500, Bill Hanna
>On Mon, 22 May 2006 22:10:10 -0400, While running hot, kony
>. >>set it up on the bench and pressed the start button. Surprise, the
>>>machine started to boot. With the small RAM I expected the process to
>>>take some time, so I moved on to another task. I came back a few >>>minutes later to find a blank monitor and no disk or fan sounds. >>
>>You should have tried it again and noted where it stopped. >>This could easily be a video driver problem or something >>similar, not a hardware problem at all. >
> >Are you telling me that a bad video driver can shut down pwr supply (fans >and all)? I'm suggesting that it is useful to know exactly where the boot process stops, because if it always stops at exact same place that could be significant. We could assume it was only one problem the system had but now with a different supply and a further progression of system response (it now at least POSTs and tries to boot), there may be more than one problem. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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>The machine is a few years old.
> Intel CA810e motherboard
> "APower" 450 watt 12v ATXINTEL P4
> 192Meg Ram
> Samsung 6.4 GB HDD
> 52x CDROM
> Floppy
> XP Home (I'm told)
>
>The power supply was replaced earlier this spring. The machine died
>again about two months later. The supply date code is 0905.