Power supply problems can be difficult to diagnose if you don't know what to look for. Here are some suggestions on how to quickly spot a faulty supply and how to replace it.
If you have a noisy fan, you smell something burning or you see smoke or flames shooting out the back of your computer, you may very well have a problem with your power supply. And I assure you, that's a whole lot worse than a dead fan if you don't catch it right away. Keep reading for more on this!
There are many different things that could cause your power supply to go bad. For instance, the fan that runs next to your power supply could get clogged up with dust and dirt and start to run much slower or the fan's bearings could start to wear off. When those things happen, your power supply is at risk of overheating and it will eventually fail. Or, it could have nothing to do with your fan. Perhaps the power supply itself was faulty from the get go and it only took a matter of time before it failed completely.
Even more so, if you're having trouble with your computer shutting down and restarting itself at random times, that could be another indicator that your power supply is going bad. And since your motherboard, CPU, disk drives, etc. all work off of the power supply, it's not a good idea to take a chance on it getting any better. If you do, you'll just have more trouble down the road. Don't worry though, replacing a power supply is rather easy to do and it's fairly cost friendly. So, if your computer is experiencing any of the symptoms I mentioned above, you'll want to check into getting a new power supply. It's a small price to pay for the safety of your computer!
Common power-related symptoms include:- Any power-on or system startup failures or lockups
- Spontaneous rebooting or intermittent lockups during normal operation
- Intermittent parity check or other memory-type errors
- HDD and fan simultaneously failing to spin (no +12V)
- Overheating due to fan failure
- Small brownouts that cause the system to restart
- Electric shocks that are felt when the case is touched
Contributing Sources:
World Start
Tech Republic
12-1-05
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