OCZ 500W PSU problems

krayzeekris

krayzeekris

krayzeekris

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17 Jun 2011
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Surrey
My 10 year old custom built Alienware died on me recently and am having trouble getting it back up and running.

Spec (from memory!):
Intel Maryville II D850EMV2 mobo
P4 2.8Ghz CPU
1GB RDRAM
60GB HDD
450W PSU
Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card
WinXP, CD & CDRW drives, 3" drive

Think that's all the good stuff. All parts are the originals save for a RAM upgrade. It started having problems firing up properly, no POST, just blinking orange HDD light and green cd drive light. After switching off then on again a few minutes later it'd be fine again. Fast forward a few weeks and it no longer switches back on but the fans still came on and if it did manage to power on, it'd die seconds later. I somehow managed to power it on and stay on long enough to show garbled colours on screen, which hinted at a graphics card failure, which I duely replaced like for like. Naturally it's an old second hand 9700, almost the last of the AGP cards and uses a floppy drive connector from the PSU. Same problem, no change.

I bought a new OCZ StealthXStream 500W PSU from Overclockers (cheapest postage of next day delivery for £8.75 and it arrived a day late grrrr) and fitted it today, and connected everything up. My first PSU change so I was grateful that everything seemed to have only one part it could connect to and one way of connecting to it. 2+2 pin to CPU, 20 pin to mobo, I used the one floppy connector on the AGP gfx card, and hooked the 4 4 pin peripherals to the cd drvies, HDD and one fan. Plugged the PSU in, switched it on at the back of PSU and the switch sparked just once, but the switch remained lit (this model has a blue LED in the power switch). The plug that plugs in the mains has a 13AMP fuse in it, the plug that I previously used for my old 450W PSU had a 5AMP fuse in it.

Following the spark, I went back to using 5AMP plugs and had no further sparks. Switched the PSU on, the switch lights up blue, the mobo green led blinks rapidly, no fans come on, and absolutely nothing happens when I switch the PC on at the front. Switching the PSU off just gradually slows the rapidly blinking green LED until it stops altogether. I then unplugged from the PSU and removed the graphics card from the mobo and switched the PSU back on, still nothing, same blinking green LED. I then unplugged everything else from the PSU bar the CPU and the mobo and switched the PSU on, still the same blinking green LED.

I haven't yet taken everything out and plugged it back in as I'm hoping there may be something else (easier?) I can try first, or if it's a defective PSU (haven't been able to find a switch, recessed or otherwise, to change between 115v or 230v so maybe it doesn't have one) or if my old PC can't handle the newer PSUs anymore!

I appreciate we had a good run together, a good decade and I take good care of my stuff, but I'd like to get it running again as a new tower isn't an option for me at the moment. Hoping very much you can help me out!

Thanks very much

Chris
 
It's possible that your PSU is defective, but ten years old is incredibly old for a PC, and not only will your PSU be of a completely different design, but a lot of computers just tend to die after much less than ten years, sadly. You've done well with it.

How much can you afford to spend right now? Assuming you have a working PSU (or you can replace this new one if it's defective), and you're happy to switch over the old hard drive, CD drive, case and OS, you could upgrade your motherboard, RAM and CPU for around £180, and your graphics card for around £100. If that's too much of a stretch, second hand you could do the former for around £100, and the latter for around £50.
 
If I remember correctly the older ATX spec gave more power on 3.3v and 5v and less on 12v so could be possible it's not giving out enough power for a p4 system? :confused:

Someone correct me if I'm wrong lol
 
Thanks hybrid. Yes that's a good idea, and I'm definitely happy to keep the case, it's a beast! I probably would go down the second hand route as I'll want to try and get this new 500W PSU working, rather than having to fork out even more for a more powerful one. £150 does seem pretty reasonable for a 'new' PC and would be more than capable of playing some good games. I'd buy a bigger HDD, the 60GB one was getting rather full, but I need to keep this HDD as there's lot of files and things on there that I still need so I'll have to set it up as a secondary or slave drive? And will it still connect and run on newer systems?

I'm also not keen on the whole CPU/heatsink/thermal paste but I should probably man up hehe
 
For a second hand system, what you'll probably want to get is a Core 2 Quad processor, with a socket 775 motherboard and 4GB of DDR2 RAM, plus a good old graphics card such as a GTX 260 or a ATI 5770. Feel free to ask us if you're not sure.

A Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB is about £40 nowadays and has ~17 times the storage of your 60GB drive, as well as being lightning fast, so I'd try to copy your old hard drive's files over to that, and start again. Your old drive can be used for now, if you can't stretch that far budget-wise just yet. Some good sized hard drives are available for a little under £30 if you're really stretched thin. Most old hard drives will run on newer systems still.

Heatsinks and thermal paste are a matter for overclocking, and realistically, that isn't something you should be all that interested in. If you've managed all these years on a Pentium 4, a stock clocked Core 2 Quad will blow you away. If you get a good C2Q chip though and you're willing to spend an extra £20, you can get a boost in performance- but I'd look at doing that further down the line.

Oh, and Thejay- you're almost certainly right. I haven't kept track of voltage on rails, but generally speaking, if there's a 4-5 year or more difference between PSU and computer, it's not going to work.
 
Ah brilliant, thank you very much, the wealth of components on offer is huge so it's great to have these. The MSI MS-7360 motherboard is socket 775 so presumably that'll do nicely, and I suppose DDR2 prices are coming down with DDR3 out.

You're right about overclocking, I'm not interested in it, but I am a gamer and am wanting to spend more time on the PC! I managed to get a good frame rate off Half Life 2: Episode One on my Alienware but I figured Episode Two might've been a step too far.
 
hybrid572 said:
ten years old is incredibly old for a PC, and not only will your PSU be of a completely different design, but a lot of computers just tend to die after much less than ten years, sadly. You've done well with it.
Click to expand...

i agree, and that must have cost a bomb from alienware :p
 
It certainly did, and was up there with the best at the time :D I also kept the price from my missus.... ;)

Yea any gaming I did was on old (relatively speaking natch) classics that I hadn't completed for one reason or another plus I'm having loads of fun still on PS2 but with my little girl joining in too - AvP, Thief, Kingdom Hearts, Uplink, Deus Ex, Quake Online. Well I 'was' having fun :'(
 
There sure is a lot of awesome old games- I've just been replaying WC2, which I'm actually having to use DOSBOX to get to run on Win7. Can't get the campaign mission reading voice working, but it sure is a fun game.

Unfortunately the board you mentioned wouldn't support a Core 2 Quad, but it does support Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme, so there's some decent upgrade potential there on a very modest budget- a good E6xxx will give you a massive boost over a Pentium 4, particularly if you stick a cooler on and overclock it. Alternatively, other cheap boards are available second hand for socket 775.

DDR2 is fairly cheap now second hand thanks to the age of it- DDR3 is so old now that pretty much every system uses it- but there's a floor to RAM prices. I think you can get 2x2GB of DDR2 for about £20 now.
 
Ah ok thanks for that, and I had the same problem with AvP - managed to get it running fine in XP and get the cutscenes running but no voiceovers when there was talking over the comms/monitors.

I haven't been able to locate my XP CD - if I build my own PC from scratch, including a new large HDD but still add my old HDD with WinXP on it, will XP still load from it? I'm way out of my depth regarding running two HDDs and trying to copy the data across.

I've found an Intel D102GGC2 mobo, socket 775 currently with an Intel Dual Core 2x 3.4Ghz, which is obviously way better than I have and will do for a few years on my budget, but it has integrated Radeon X200 graphics. I know this is poor for gaming but it has a PCIE x16 slot and a PCIE x1 slot - can I buy a good graphics card and slot it in one of these and switch off the onboard graphics?

Thought I knew a bit about PCs but I'm quickly finding out I don't know enough about the details and finer points!

Cheers

Chris

[EDIT] I'm going to edit this as I keep reading/finding things out! Reading about the different chipsets for the s775, I originally assumed the P45 would be best, but a G41 board like this Gigabyte G41MT-S2P Intel G41 (Socket 775) DDR3 is compatible with the cheaper DDR3 and is only £37. I was originally wanting a normal ATX board, but this seems to be a really good mATX board, capable of 8GB DDR3 RAM for starters, presumably a good GPU. No SLI but that's nothing something for me to worry about at the moment I think :)
 
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Unfortunately you'll need to reinstall windows xp if your machine came with a full retail copy of XP I believe there is a way to retrieve the cd key so you could possibly use another installation cd?

Yes if it has a PCI-E 16x slot you'll be able to add a dedicated graphic card when you want to.

Also if you don't mind me asking what is your current budget?
 
Thanks for that but I'll probably look more at the G41 chipset due to the price. I don't really have a budget, at least not a large one. I'm after a reasonable spec PC that's capable of playing games from the last few years, not necessarily the games of this year or last but there's plenty of good games released over the last 5-6 years to keep me happy. I need to spend as little as possible, but with a good PC, so I need to find a good balance between cost and performance, I'm not bothered with overclocking and not too interested in the ability to upgrade, though if that's possible I'd call that a bonus :)
 
Well just say what you'd feel comfortable spending no matter how small just makes it easier for people to suggest possible upgrades :)
 
OK np, well a board in the region of £40, something like Overclockers' Gigabyte G41MT-S2P Intel G41 (micro ATX, DDR3) £37 or ASRock G41C-GS (ATX plus Intel X4500 accelerator plus it's DDR2/DDR3) £45. There's not a lot of performance difference between DDR2 and 3 so maybe I'd be better off getting 3-4GB of fast DDR2 than 3-4GB of slower DDR3 but at the same price? And that's another, what, £35? Maybe that's too much, could spend less here and upgrade the RAM at a later date. Sounds like I just talked myself into the ASRock - unless anyone knows any problems with it, or the X4500??

[EDIT] Please correct me if I'm wrong but the above two boards will only allow 1.5v DIMM RAM, so does that rule out Kingston's 1.8v VDIMM and Corsair's 1.8v SODIMM? I'm looking at Overclockers' products! In which case OcUK Value 2GB (1x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 at 1333MHz is incredibly fast for £16, though it's timings are 9-9-9 compared to DDR2's 5-5-5-15, and I tend to shy away from value products - anyone had any good or bad experiences with these?

Processor-wise I'd love a Core 2 Quad, but is it better to spend the same amount on possibly a slower quad, or a faster dual?

Likewise the graphics card. I haven't looked into the CPUs or GPUs enough yet, just trying to take one component at a time, and then maybe tweak it depending on cost.

I can't spend 100s on each one, if I could combine the two for £100 or less that would be great and I need to factor in a HDD, 500GB or 1TB shouldn't be more than £40 again, but adding all that up is circa £200 which I didn't want to go near, but if I have to then I will.

Hardly a concrete budget!
 
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Having just tested the PSU with a multimeter, the 12v is giving a reading of 11.54 and the 5v a reading of 4.83 on both the motherboard and molex connectors, which seems to me to be too low, does this confirm or at least suggest a bad psu?
 
Thanks for that but urgh, was hoping it'd be the reason why it won't run my new-build system. Don't even get a POST. The PSU fan spins while the paper clip is in, but when it's attached to the motherboard and case fans, neither the PSU fan nor the case fans spin, I get nothing from pushing the PC power on button, and the motherboard LED is flickering. Hence why I thought it would be the PSU. I suppose it could still be the PSU, the paper clip and multimeter are hardly conclusive tests, I was just hoping it would be more clear-cut than this.

[EDIT] Realised I said it was a new build but didn't tell you what I want the PSU to power up, so here it is:

Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) - one stick each in the blue RAM slots for dual channel according to the board manual, which are separate on this board, they run blue A1, black A2, blue B1, black B2 instead of keeping the colours next to each other.
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ)
IGP for now until I can get a separate graphics card
 
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Are you testing the PSU at load or just with the paperclip in?

The voltages could drop further under load and they're already pretty low anyway.
 
A-ha! Just the paper clip in, got no way to put it under load as it won't fire the PC, though this is probably an answer in itself. I could hook it up to a case fan and the DVDRW drive, but that's hardly a 'load'.
 
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