[AKbird]

Hello Forum,

I have a desktop running Windows XP. It is a 5 year old homebuilt athlon 64 machine. Antec truepower 2 power supply, 1 GB Ram, 4 SATA HD's, a PCI sound card, a PCIe graphics card.

I am suspicious of the power supply, but I have little experience in this, and hope to hear the thoughts of others.

Over the past few weeks it has become highly unstable, with frequent freezing of web browsers, and other software also.

Today, after one freeze, I had to turn the front switch off to get the machine to shut down. The machine refused to restart. The initial screen came up where it finds the RAM and all the Hard drives. Then came the screen where it asks if you want to start normally or in safe mode. However, it could go no farther, in either normal or safe mode.

So, I opened the case and unplugged my HD's, and plugged in a spare drive, intending to install windows on the new drive to see if it might be a windows problem. However, it couldn't get fired up with that drive and the windows CD either. When that failed, I unplugged that spare drive, and plugged my main drive with the OS on it back in.

I then pushed the on button. The fans spun for a moment and then spun back down. nothing. Tried again. Fans didn't spin. I cycled the on-off switch on the power supply, and tried again. Fans spun briefly, then spun down and died. I could repeat this: cycle the switch on the power supply, press the button on the case, fans spin briefly, then nothing.

So, I uplugged the computer for a while to let the capacitors discharge fully. Plugged it back in: pressed the button, the machine fired right up and I got to my desktop. I shut it back down and plugged my other three HD's back in. Now I got a repeat of the initial symptoms: it stopped starting up after the "start windows normally" screen. I unplugged the extra drives, and now it's working fine again on only the main drive.

So, what might the problem be? Thanks for you througts!

Some extra info, perhaps relevent, perhaps not: I recently moved 1000 miles, right before the problems started. The machine had some padding on this road trip, but it also experienced some vibration for sure. Also, the move was in Alaska, and the computer experienced tempertures to -30F for several days. It did not experience repeated rapid tempertrue fluxuations however. Also, I removed the HD's during the move, and kept them in the heated cab of my vehicle.

So, the machine is 5 years old, and has been recently been frozen and shaken about, and has had HD's removed and replaced, if that helps in the diagnosis.

Thank you all!

 

[quizme1220]

Welcome to TSF AKbird. First it would help if you gave us the wattage of your power supply. You must remember you are trying to power 4 SATA HD's which use more power than the regular ATA/100 HDD's, and you have PCIe graphics card.

Stating your complete computer specs would help greatly.

 

[AKbird]

Sure thing quizme. The computer was built in early 2006.

Windows XP, SP2
Power supply: Antec Truepower 2.0 480 watt
Motherboard: Chaintech VNF4 Ultra
CPU: Athlon 64 3000+
Ram: 2x512MB PDP/Patriot PC3200 Model PDC1G3200LLK
HDD's: two Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA 150 and two Western Digital Caviar SE16 750Gb SATA Hard Drive
PCIe graphics card: nvidea GeForce 6200
A nice PCI M-Audio sound card, I don't know the model
a PCI wireless network card: SMC282W

One other observation: the HD's seem pretty hot, they are all adjacent to each other and have little ventiliation.

 

[quizme1220]

AKbird, Wow looking at your specs you definitely need a larger psu. Antec's are good but for what you are using I would recommend you look at the following link http://www.techsupportforum.com/f255/power-supply-information-and-selection-192218.html. BTW, does your case have a front fan? or you could install a hard drive fan http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=577&name=Hard-Drive-Cooling.

 

[AKbird]

Quizme, thanks for the help. So, sounds like you believe that the symptoms I'm seeing are likely from the overtaxed power supply? I'll look into solutions, thanks. I don't have a front fan, that's also an excellent suggestion. I appreciate the help.

 

[medthemad]

I'd like to add that I'm not so sure its the wattage of the power supply that is lacking, 480W should be more than enough for that maching (I have a machine at home thats similar and running on 420W without any issues).

To be more precise its an Athlon XP 2800+
With 2gigs of RAM
5 sata disks
2 scsi disks
AIT X1600 XT
with a couple of PCI cards (2 NICs, 1 Audio, 1 scsi controller)


I do however agree that the issue is most likely the power supply, but rather capacitor aging thats causing this not power rating. So its maybe a better idea to go for a better quality PSU rather than just a higher capacity one.

Also, as quizme1220 said hard drive/front cooling is probably a good idea, as keeping a cool case is very important for stability. Assuming that your PSU is top mounted you'll find it recieves a huge amount of residual heat from the rest of the PC.