Thanks for the replies
Yes - on this occasion - simply because its the weekend when I have the time
to do it and I don't need to wait - the £5 I could save online is worth it
in time and convenience (not having a pc and not having time later on when
it turns up in 2 days time!).
Well it wasn't just about saving the fiver, but about
getting to pick exactly what you wanted, or alot closer at
least. Also it's often the case that a local shop may not
have many good value offerings, they'll have a lot of crap
then something a bit overpriced as the other alternative
like a $100, 500W Antec, which is quite a bit more than your
system needs.
Thanks for the tips on brands, much obliged. I sent another post this
evening with another problem related to the PSU but the post seems to have
gone missing (I attached 2 pics for ref) - basically the PSU motherboard
power connector seems to have leaked an oily substance (corrosion?) onto the
motherboard side of the connection as well as the PSU's connector (hope that
makes sense). Can I take the old PSU out and replace it, even though the
mobo's connection has this 'corrosion' mark on it (smells singed / burnt)?
I have seen a lot of power supply failures but never one
where there was an oily substance leaking from the
connector. At first I was suspecting that you may have had
a capacitor(s) failure and this was the liquid.
Then you described the singed/burnt detail and I wonder if a
poor connection had overheaded it and decomposed the
insulation or portion of the connector.
You do need to get all the residue off of the mating surface
of the motherboard connector, off the metal pins in it.
They're quite small and it will be difficult to do but I
would try pulling the board out and very liberally spraying
it with contact cleaner, carefully (keeping the board
straight and preventing it from flexing) shaking out excess
contact cleaner, then spraying more contact cleaner on it
and shaking it out again, repeating this a few times. If
the residue remains, there is a good chance it will not only
foul contact, but get in the new power supply connector as
well then both are questionable. Technically it's possible
to entirely remove the ATX connector from the motherboard,
but is a rather advanced thing to do, generally something
that wouldn't need suggested to someone already competent
and capable of doing it.
Sometimes a board failure causes this kind of excessive
current draw and it could be that you need both a new PSU
and a new board. Since the old PSU is of marginal capacity
for the system it's hard to say whether testing it outside
of system use to confirm a basic functionality would ensure
it would run the system. This is one of those situations
were a shop could more easily figure out which and how many
parts were faulty simply because they had spares around to
verify the operation of everything... but then the cost
would be higher than replacing a few parts too.
I still like the idea I'd made previously that if you
overbuy a bigger PSU than needed, you can reuse it on the
next system build, while a lowest-reasonable-cost PSU to run
that system will most likely not be suitable for reuse.
