more power!

I have the absolute worst luck when it comes to computer hardware. Most of the time the problem boils down to me not doing research and just buying whatever looks good enough or is cheap on the fly, and usually end up spending *more* money just fixing the problem. I’ve been getting much better at that later, but I’m still living with hardware that needs to be “upgraded” to some better quality standards, and now and then the olden ways bite me in the butt. That’s what happened this weekend.

Now, at home I have three amd64 boxes. One I use as my regular desktop, and the other two take up residence at various parts in my apartment collecting dust while I save money to turn them into media servers. Actually, I think there might be four, I can’t remember. I know I’ve got three cases, though.

The problem with all the boxes is that the power supplies are dead. Two of them (Athena Power brand), I bought at PC Club about a year and a half ago, a month apart even, and they both died on me a few weeks ago, equally about a month between the two. I was pretty bummed about those, but it didn’t really matter much, since I only need one desktop right? I can always fix them later. I should RMA them, though I’m not sure if they are still under warranty or not. And frankly, sometimes it’s not worth the hassle to spend the money shipping the things back just to get another crappy power supply in return that’s only going to die on you again. Okay, maybe it is. Who knows.

So, I’m down to one desktop plus one working power supply, but I don’t like the desktop I’m using. Hey, I’ve got three (or four) to choose from, I can be picky. So I do the sensible thing, and plan this migration all out. I get both cases out, and put all the hardware on the floor so I know everything that’s going to go in there. Get it all organized, and start putting the new one back together, power supply and all. After I’m done, I prop it up, plug it in and power it up, and the motherboard won’t post.

One of the harddrives (there’s two in there) is making a wheezing sound and clicking. At first I figured it was the SATA cables. I’ve had some go bad on me before, and replacing them fixed the issues. So I swapped those out, and nothing different was happening. I had had this problem happen with the harddrives before, but I never figured out exactly what the issue was. I decided to keep poking at it to see what the matter was.

First I unplugged all the power connections and booted. That worked fine. Then I tried just the DVD drive. That worked fine too. Then just one SATA drive. That worked great. It was when I added a second one, that the thing wouldn’t boot at all. At this point I figured it was either a crappy power supply (big surprise, there) or one of the SATA connectors wasn’t working right. So I unplugged the SATA cables and tested them both individually on each connector, only powering up one harddrive at a time. Each time, the motherboard posted, so it was definately the power supply.

Turns out I’ve got some no-name 350w psu in there, which I figured was good to go. Oddly enough, it worked fine in my other box which had three harddrives and a dual core amd64 in there. Why it doesn’t work on a single core with only two drives is beyond me. But that’s definately the problem.

So, this morning, even though I really can’t afford it right now, I bit the bullet and bought a decent 500w Thermaltake power supply on Newegg. Thankfully enough, they’re giving me free 2nd day air shipping, but until them I’m pretty much computerless at home. I do have my laptop, but I’m doing some long-overdue upgrades on it. Either way, I’ll be out of commission for a few days, which is always nice to take a break either way.

I still have no idea what I’m going to do for the other power supplies. I’ll admit that I again made this purchase rather hastily, only because I need something soon, but there’s plenty of time for the other boxes to make sure I put them together right. If anyone has suggestions for hardware, I’m all ears.