Tragedy Averted

The Great Tragedy of 2020.
I was turning my PC on when the power flicked off then back on…yeah…PC won’t turn back on. Despite the surge protector. I cried so hard my kids woke up thinking the cat had died.
Awaiting diagnosis. Hoping it is just the power supply.
As if 2020 couldn’t get any worse, now my biggest source for maintaining sanity has been stripped from me. (Enter Drama Queen) :sob: :scream: :confounded: :angry: :woozy_face:
UPDATE: the power supply did its job. RIP 700w beauty.
Now, delivery is sooooo slloooowww right now. I guess I can start up my laptop and play my old Nancy Drew games…
ANOTHER UPDATE: apparently power supplies are in short supply. July 4th before I will be back in the NMS universe… :cry:

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Too bad, I think I have an 800 Watt piece lying around somehwere, but that won’t cross the ocean any faster either…
If it’s any consolation, I am always playing on my laptop. The reason that PSU is lying around is that there just wasn’t any space left for the tower after the kids were born. Also, my wife was somewhat agitated by the jetlike noise the fans made… :laughing:

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Why do you need 700W? I generally have 450W, that’s more than plenty. Ok I generally go for a mainstream machine. So currently a Ryzen 5 and a slightly older AMD RX480.

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I think the 700w drifted in with some hand me downs my son is always gathering up. He builds PCs for people who can’t afford one.
At any rate, my PC is now named LAZARUS.
Not sure what happened. One minute the power supply seemed dead, then when my son tried routing it through another PC, it came back to life…anyway, it seems all is fine. I don’t suppose it could turn itself off? I have no idea.
What a relief. What a day. I can’t wait to see what happens next… :grimacing:

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They do usually have breakers, but it’s unusual for it to come back after an extended period of time. Either breakers need to be replaced, or switched back in if they’re switchable (though I don’t think I’ve ever seen a PSU with switchable breakers… ?).

Some people want a GPU! :laughing:
Honestly, for a rig built for gaming, 700 to 800 Watts is kind of the minimum. Or has the power consumption of parts been reduced that much while I wasn’t looking? That’s possible of course, but while I was bothering with stuff like that (admittedly almost 10 years ago) the consumption of high-powered hardware was still merrily increasing.

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It came back on when it was placed in another PC. I don’t suppose a connection came loose? When it was then reconnected to my PC, it worked. All I know is I am happy! And now I am wondering why power supplies are in short supply? Did everyone build a PC while stuck at home? :thinking:

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A few years back, I was sure that I fried my laptop because it would not power up. Turns out that I had plugged something into a USB port and that was shorting out the 5V power to the entire computer. Unplugged the USB cord and all was well. It really surprised me that the USB connector power pins were not better isolated from everything else.

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Heh, I had kind of a reverse issue once… I remember being rather surprised that my raspberry pi kept running although I unplugged the power cord. Turns out it just continued to draw from the USB HUB that was attached to it which had its own power supply. :grin:

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Kind of reminds me of the time recently that I was playing with the idea of using two graphics cards in the system and then the Motherboard Died (literally smelled something burning and nothing worked) :slight_smile: I was crying literally too. I just got the motherboard only a week before and It sucks when the thing you depend on for getting you through the day is down for a while :slight_smile:

Luckily I had a back up that can play most of my games and also have a UPS for the various power failures that happen on our little island in the pacific :slight_smile:

Don’t trust power strips, they only can fix the problem of overages. If the power drops off too low before completely cutting out or fluxes a lot you can have really bad things happen to electronics.

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Actually, Just last week I had an issue with two graphics cards. I had two to do some folding at home to benefit COVID-19 research (If you’re not folding I would highly suggest it as it really helps research for diseases and viruses like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or COVID with your extra computing power, link is here) and my computer would shut off randomly. Luckily, once I removed the second graphics card it fixed my problem with seemingly no damage to my computer. Looks like I lucked out :upside_down_face:

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Yeah I think the problem lies in the handling of the heat on the Motherboard. The ASUS MOBO’s seem to all have an overheat problem as my first one I had over a year earlier died within 2 years. With the higher heat of the Two Cards in the System plus I was getting temps over 70 degrees from the sensors of the card(s) (didn’t show individual temps for some reason) before the system died and smelled bad.

Keep your systems cool and don’t push it too far in these hot sweltering summers people :slight_smile:

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And double check your thermal paste. Mine had dried up last year when Iwas going to replace my heat sink. Just needed new paste. Stays cool now no matter how I push it.

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