PSU gears down before starting.

[ryan777]

Hi, I'm a little concerned about a psu whine I'm hearing. I've read that its the caps or magnets and that I should replace it. The whining started out of nowhere and persisted when the pc was off until I hit the back switch. The whining calmed down to almost non-existent when I used a compressed air can to clean it. Given that it died down when I cleaned it, I would write off the issue however, when I turn the pc on it boots (bios beeps once) then it shuts down. The psu while start at a high whine, then gear down (I assume that's whats going on from the sound which lowers in stages). When the psu is down to normal the PC starts again. So, in short, the pc boots, turns off, psu gears down, pc starts. It occurs to me there is too much power but I can't see that being the case (tell me if I'm wrong).

The pc is:
700w ocz stealth (I think stealth, can't remember and doesn't say on it)
core2 duo 7200 @ 3.04
1 gig standard ram
3 hard disks
asus p5k sd2 mainboard
gfx 8800gt nvidia video card

the cpu is overclocked. Though I had it at 3.6 before the problem; which, caused stability issues. Its been down for at least a month now.

My main concern is what happens when it turns on. The Psu does not appear to have any bulging capacitors.

Anyone know whats going on? Is this because I overclocked too high?

 

[Proximon]

No, it's because your PSU is failing. You need to stop using it before it does damage something.

Your PSU is supposed to send a power ready signal to the motherboard when the power becomes stable. At that point the motherboard has permission to boot up. If this is taking more than a second or two, you have trouble.

RMA if under warranty, or get a higher quality unit. OCZ isn't a bad brand, but there are better.

Corsair, Seasonic, PC Power and Cooling (OCZ owns them now), Antec.

 

[ryan777]

Thanks, I'll go dig up the receipt.