Killed 2 PSU's in 1 week.

[amunro]

Ok so I built my PC myself, but as I am now at university, I have not used it much this year. I recently bought a new monitor, and so I have been useing it extensively instead of my laptop. I am a very heavy user, only doing a shutdown once a week (the rest of the time on standby) and gaming for 3-4hours at a time.

First PSU sparked and burnt out. Bought a second, and after 1 week during gaming, the house fuse tripped. When I got it back on, the computer was dead and would not start up. No smell of burning, but it was a cheap £30 psu and im not sure if it CAUSED the circuit to blow, or died due to the circuit blowing anyway.

System specs:

Gigabyte Motherboard
4gb RAM
Nvidea 9800GT 1gb GPU
AMD Athlon II x4 3ghz
PSU - **

I am a hefty user of my computer, and i am moving from my laptop as I need more power for gaming. My graphics card is a dream, running duel monitors and gives me no problems. It is always quite hot, but never overheating too much. One thing I have noticed however is although the gpu does not overheat, it does cause a build up of heat inside the tower (I have 2 external fans but not that powerful). I have a few theories about what is going on and would like some input at the most likely solution

Firstly, I have to plug the tower into an extension because my desk does not reach the power-socket. This means it shares its power with 3 other appliances. On top of this, I only have 2 sockets, split into 3 extenders. This means the current may be quite unstable, and I will probably invest in a surge protector in future...

Secondly, the air inside the tower is quite hot, however I presume this is normal. The PSU is always very hot, and overheating may be the cause of breakage. How could I solve this, would a better more expensive PSU be able to withstand higher temperatures?

So I am not sure what causes the failure. It could be the psu overheating due to high demand of power/build up of heat inside the tower. It could be that it has a poor power source from only 2 sockets (which power roughly 15 peripherals). It could be that it is just a cheap psu and failed due to a fuse tripping at my house.

I would be very grateful for your input. I am planning on spending about £70 to get a decent corsair, but if it is a problem due to overheating, I doubt that a decent PSU would last very long.

 

[Deadstick50]

You dont mention what brand case this is in, but it seems obvious you dont have enough fans INSIDE the case. You do need to fix that as heat is the main killer of anything electronic in nature.
In my system the air inside the case NEVER even gets warm, much less getting HOT!

Now as to the PSU problem, its really simple, stop buying crap PSU's, and you really need to have a surge protector inline and plugged by itself into the one wall socket

Not trying to be an ass, but you need to understand what you are doing to everything in that box the way you are currently running it!

Good luck, Dead

 

[AntiZig]

I'm slightly confused what you mean by house fuse tripped.
Do you mean a circuit breaker for your house electrical power burned out? In that case you were obviously trying to pull too much current through the line. So the recommendation would be, don't overload the 2 sockets you're using, move some of the devices to another line to lighten the load.
If you meant that there's a PC-side main fuse that got tripped (I'm sorry I'm not too experienced in general things pc hardware incorporates) then you obviously have to look at a quality PSU plus cooling your case better. Basically what dead said above.

 

[amunro]

No, like you said, the actual circuit breaker for the house went. Coming to think of it, I don't use that much stuff at once. I have various things plugged in, but turned off. While using my computer, I have 2 24inch monitors, the computer, a desk light and maybe a few other things. I will try remove as much as I can.

As for the tower overheating, I did not realize that it shouldn't be getting hot at all inside the tower. It is normally around 30 degrees. I will buy a few more fans with a new PSU to try fix this. Im just worried that even more fans will cause the PSU to overheat even more...

 

[Deadstick50]

Ok, hold up...we appear to have different ideas of what constitutes hot. If your case temp is 30c (or is that your MB temp thats 30c?) then you're not real bad there, what is the ambient temp in your room like? Generally the inside case temp can be 5-10c hotter than your room temp without alot of problems occuring. Other considerations, is the fan in the back blowing out while the fan in the front is pulling air in? If not then that can make things heat up alot, also having to strong of a fan in the front can cause the cpu to heat up because of air turbulance. Side note........ adding extra items to your PSU really isnt going to up its temp unless you got a bad fan in it.

It could all still be falling back to having a low quality PSU, A nice Corsair or simular in a 500-600W range should run it without stressing it out.
Expect to spend $60 or more to get a good PSU

 

[Silvune]

Which works out in reality to £50 in the UK; there aren't many good units below the price of £50 (apart from low wattage units like the Antec Earthwatts Green EA-380D). Occasionally you can get those good units for £30 but I doubt those were the units you were getting.

My recommendation is the Antec High Current Gamer HCG-520 80Plus Bronze for ~£56
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/245671

If you still have problems after buying that then the problem is elsewhere.

 

[Deadstick50]

@Silvune....sorry, didnt think to convert the currency! 😉 Yes a higher end Antec would do the trick. Thats what I was getting at, was dont ever skimp on a PSU!

 

[amunro]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Coolermaster-Silent-Pro-700W-Modular/dp/B001BZD730/ref=sr_1_4?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1303590343&sr=1-4

This was the piece I was looking at but I think 700W is far too much for the hardware specs I am using. As for the temperature, I would say it felt 'warm' when I opened the case to investigate. The fans are set up correctly, but the side fan is not very powerful at all, and I may upgrade to get better suction of air into the case. The PSU always feels very hot. I do not know if this is because of undervoltage/overvoltage, or because my gfx card requires so much juice.

I will probably but the http://www.ebuyer.com/product/245671 piece. Thanks for all your input!

 

[jsc]

A 9800GT only needs about 10 amps max at 12 volts.

One of my systems has an OC'd Q9550, 4 GB RAM, a GTX260 - a card that pulls 1 1/2 times as much power as yours, a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard, 3 hard drives (2.6 TB total) and an optical, and a Soundblaster card all powered by a Corsair 750TX.

Running 3 instances of Prime95 to load the CPU and 3DMark06 to load the GPU, it pulls 375 watts from the wall as measured by my Kill-a-Watt meter. Figuring 80% efficiency, the system pulls 300 watts from the PSU.

You do not need a powerful PSU, but you do need a good one. a good 500 - 600 watt PSU will be more than enough.

 

[amunro]

Ok thanks jsc. That makes me a lot more confident in my system. I still feel that it is overheating slightly as it is an old case, and so I will get a new fan for the side as well!