Help with computer?

[Gizmokid2005]

Sounds good! Glad you got it figured out.

[cauzomb]

Hey thanks for the help, Gizmokid2005 and cauzomb. I've tested out the pc with my old PSU and found out that its really the PSU that's not working. I'm planning to send it back tomorrow. Wish me luck, and thanks for all the help!

hey! thats good news/bad etc.. Good thing to have extra parts to try. Unfortunate that your PSU died.. seams like a common thing maybe they got a burst of radiation from some government satalite that makes them die suddenly HEHEH...... watch out for those new PSU's that have bad capacitors from the get go, when you plug them in, and turn it on for the first time, one goes POOF and burns and gives a small puff of smoke. I forget which brand, but it was a certain wattage PSU that was produced by one MFG, and re-branded by several retailer's

[cauzomb]

Turns out it was covered a long time ago, and mentioned in detail over at HP's forums.

Jul 25, 2007 16:46:58 GMT Unassigned

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There was a *MAJOR* problem with capacitor manufacturers a few years ago (that still affects "old stock" today). It was big news in the technical world, but consumers only heard brief stories about bad components in cell phones (as cell phones are a very common device).

Basically, in a case of industrial espionage gone wrong, a formula for an "electrolyte" (the conductive "paste" in electrolytic capacitors) was stolen and sold on the black market to several other capacitor manufacturers. Unfortuanately, the stolen formula was missing a key ingredient, the stabilizer and no one noticed until the caps started failing. Several million were already manufactured and sold so companies kept "mum" (probably fearing they'd be busted for using the stolen formula).

Without the stabilizer, the electrolyte would quickly break down when powered and form gasses. The pressure from the gas would "bulge" the cap and they would burst (slowly leaking electrolyte everywhere). As the cap "dried out" it's capacitance changed causing instability in the electrical circuit.

Most of these caps were used in power regulation circuits - on the motherboard (for CPU VCore regulation) and in power supplies. Failed caps in either the motherboard or power supply can take out one or both as they're basically tied together in providing "system" power regulation. I've replaced power supplies only to to have to replace the motherboard soon after (before I started looking for leaky caps). I now check both the MB and PS for bad caps when replacing either.

So there's the short story - you can read the full story by searching your favorite search engine. BTW, although the compromised electrolyte formula was primarily bought by lower tier capacitor manufacturers, a couple prominent "top tier" manufacturers also got caught - Nichicon was one.

And, "officially", HP is correct when they say there wasn't a "manufacturing" problem - it technically a "vendor supply" problem. It's all in the semantics - careful wording probably by their legal or corp communications department.

- nn6o

p.s. Everything above is based on my limited recollection. Check old news stories for more accurate info.

[itzbilly]

Hm.. I'll watch out that. Thanks, cauzomb.

[itzbilly]

Hey, on the new computer! All is well, thanks for all the help!

[cauzomb]

cool! must be a load off, I've been debating with my brother about his issue's being motherboard or psu related. His RAID is so unstable that we had to pull all his sata drives out and use one drive on the IDE cable. I've seen a couple reports of his motherboard brand having issues with the sata raid, but they seam to be related to voltage/psu, but stems from the motherboard voltage regs or sata-controller itself?.. Now he's got four or five raptor paper weights till he gets a stable platform