Over the past couple of months, my home computer has been acting up. During bootup the computer start sequence would fail, right after the drive started to spin up. I found that if I turned off the "hard" on/off switch at the back of the computer (the one that's on the power supply), and turned it back on, I could get the computer to start, and it would run without problems. The problem seemed to me to be a power supply that was failing, so I figured that I would need to replace it shortly.
The first time I noticed any problems was when I tried to restart the computer after it had been put in stand-by mode, so I stopped using stand-by and would shut it down instead. Recently, I have started noticing the problem during bootup.
Yesterday morning, I was unable to get the computer to start up, even after three or four attempts using the trick that had worked before. On the way to work I bought a new power supply, and when I got home, installed it. The computer now seems to be working as it should. This leads me to believe that the old power supply actually was the culprit.
I should add that the computer is about two years old, and is one that I put together from parts purchased at a chain computer/electronics store (Fry's). The old power supply was 350 W, which I believe was sufficient for the machine. The new one is 500 W (the place I got it had only one model).
My question is: What would have caused my old power supply to fail after what seems a relatively short time (about two years). The MTBF for the new one is 50,000 hours, which at the rate my wife and I use this computer should last us 50 to 100 years. I don't know anything about the internals of a power supply. What are the parts that can fail?
Thanks,
Mark
The first time I noticed any problems was when I tried to restart the computer after it had been put in stand-by mode, so I stopped using stand-by and would shut it down instead. Recently, I have started noticing the problem during bootup.
Yesterday morning, I was unable to get the computer to start up, even after three or four attempts using the trick that had worked before. On the way to work I bought a new power supply, and when I got home, installed it. The computer now seems to be working as it should. This leads me to believe that the old power supply actually was the culprit.
I should add that the computer is about two years old, and is one that I put together from parts purchased at a chain computer/electronics store (Fry's). The old power supply was 350 W, which I believe was sufficient for the machine. The new one is 500 W (the place I got it had only one model).
My question is: What would have caused my old power supply to fail after what seems a relatively short time (about two years). The MTBF for the new one is 50,000 hours, which at the rate my wife and I use this computer should last us 50 to 100 years. I don't know anything about the internals of a power supply. What are the parts that can fail?
Thanks,
Mark