You no thought have a "primary problem" causing the secondary problem of the p/s unit to "poof" as you say. Six months is a long time but enough to push whatever to the wear&tear limit. You got all those goodies attached, but do you really need them *ALL* at any given time, I thought it. You should only use what you really need and then add-on. The problem remains what caused your p/s unit(s) to fail. I believe you crossed the line, start reducing attached items. All this in cause to re-use the system with less devices. Otherwise, something has already blown but not 100% failure, taking down any new p/w down with it. Remove the system case cover and observe, maybe a some fan has failed, IN OTHER WORDS DON"T TAKE ANYTHIN GOR GRANTED, check it. You maybe better served, going to a simple as possible system, remove anything for now, but the FD, 1 CD, ! HD, video, and basic kybd. etc. then try it. Run it like that for days and see what happens, then add-on until it "poofs" again, hopefully the last device is either the last straw for p/s or a broken deviice. When it comes to p/w units, quality counts, so just because a unit is rated 650W, doesn't mean its the best. Thes p/s degrade and thier rating only is good for a short sustained time, NOT for prolonged usage, thus if you push it, they will fail or degrade until they fail. go figure...Then there's the outside world, line surges, etc. maybe recent power glitches, it happens. Got a power surge protector or basic UPS?
good luck -----Willy ![]()
Ok it started out as a normal day of computing - filesharing, watching movies, listening to music, and then when I played Age of Myth, poof the comuter turned off. And it did not turn back on. No lights, no fan, no sign of any jolt of energy anywhere.
So after a long time of denial, I noticed my 650w "extremo power" dual fan power supply had the smell of IHOP on a busy day. I wondered why after day after day of constant use of downloading videos, burning DVD's, gaming, audio engineering, college papers, web design, etc etc, why burn out now? I couldnt figure out the answer.
So I put in a regular 420w power supply and my computer worked again. I played around with it, to see if anything weird happened. I uninstalled the virus scanner, installed another one, websurfed here and there, and then I played Age of Myth and after about half an hour of play, my computer shut down again! But this time it was different, even though it did not turn back on, there was a light still on. So I unplugged it for about two minutes.
When I plugged it back in, I was able to turn my computer back on. Really confused as to what the hell could behind this altered dimension of wacky hardware I chose to run my antivirus program which at that point I thought maybe there is some kind of state of the art virus that is burning my power supplies. After about half an hour to 40 minutes of virus scanning my comuter made this "poof" sound and my computer has not been able to turn back on since.
I already lost a 650w dual fan psu and a 420w psu because of this mystery. I have a 550w psu left but I dont want to install it until I know what is causing this havoc. I do have 250w to test any ideas.
I have a relatively high performance system. XP,2 IEDE HDD's (with fans), 2 SATA HDD's (with fans), 1 21in and 1 17in monitor, 1gb pc 3200 memory, G-Force 5600 256mb video card, Delta 66 audio card with the Omni Studio external interface, a DVDburner, a DVD/CDR combo, a front panel digital display, side and roof led fans, and a led fan in the back and also two game pads, Pocket PC, and a digital camera all connected to USB ports. This was all working just fine, for close to half a year already.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

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