YMK
09-05-2001, 08:07 PM
Something funny happened to my homebuilt system a few days ago. I was playing some Soldier of Fortune when the whole PC just froze, the screen froze, the audio froze, no alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del, nothing. It was late so I decided just to go to bed. Next morning, I boot it up. It hangs on startup. I try to boot again, no beep, no video signal, HDD LED's stay on continuously. When I turn it on all fans and drives power up, even the LED on the motherboard lights up. What was I to think? I thought about replacing my motherboard or chip even though none of my components are overclocked. But one thing I noticed was that even when I turned on the system, the Athlon stayed ICE COLD. The last possible thing that could wreck a system, the thing you depend on the MOST in a system died on me.... the power supply! It puzzled me because there was +5v and +12v and this PSU was only 6 weeks old. I didn't have any heavy cooling equipment, no peltiers/TEC's. I just had 1 120mm fan which only consumes about 5 or 6 watts. The fan was in no way responsible for the failure as I know HDDs drain more current than fans and because the 12v rail was fine. I guess the low voltage (3.3v?) rail just died because I replaced the PSU and the Athlon booted perfectly. Moral of the story... Never overlook your PSU!