John B. Smith wrote:
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 16:15:17 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

My computer has booted without failure for a week. Thinking about all
your replies something occurred to me: some time back I turned off the
power supply with the switch at the back to do something or other.
When I turned it back on it didn't work. Eventually it did, but since
that time I've been unplugging the supply every time I wanted to mess
around inside the case, then plugging back in when I wanted to turn
on. So I'm thinking maybe the flaky on switch caused the supply to
drop out in mid-boot, then come immediately back on. Without an
orderly shutdown maybe the machine would fall back to the C1 BIOS
display which occurs at turn-on but was prevented from starting up
again by the state of things.

So I started thinking about a new power supply. This one interests me
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817703038

My old power supply is this one:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817703005
I have it mounted in the TOP of my Gigabyte case
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16811233013

My motherboard is this one:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813127050

Here is one of the questions a NewEgg poster posed about the newer
supply I'm considering:

"Just bought one of these for a computer I'm putting together (first
one). However, upon opening the box, I discovered that the 20pin ATX
connector seems to be missing the third pin. Not only that, but that
whole wire is missing. Is this how it's supposed to be? Looks sort of
like that in the picture on Newegg, but it's really hard to tell."

The answer was:
" That is the -5v line. It was used in very old machines (ancient by
aging standards)
Manufacturers leave it out because there is no reason for the
additional cost since people aren't building computers with 15 year
old hardware."

Well, I built my baby in 2008 so it's not quite 15 years old BUT do I
need that -5 volt line? And does anybody see anything else that would
prevent the power supply I'm considering from working in my set up?

2008 ?

No, the need for -5V disappeared around 1999-2000 or so.

*******

Note that PC Power And Cooling has changed hands a couple of
times. As far as I'm concerned, the value of the original company,
was the staff, and their care in selecting contract-built
supplies for retail sales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Power_and_Cooling

When another company "buys a brand", you could get just about
anything. Then, when it comes to Newegg reviews, you need a
metric ton of reviews from the current calendar year, to
"calibrate" the reliability.

The power supply industry, relies on a lot of contract
manufacturing. Even when a company makes its own supplies,
if they need a "$20 rubbish supply", they contract it out
to one of their competitors.

Seasonic, Enermax, Fortron/Sparkle make their own supplies.
With Fortron, you can tell what you're buying, by the cabling,
as the wires on the cables are "as short as possible" :-)

If you can find reviews for specific supplies, the reviewer
can sometimes identify who made it. For example, Antec supplies
were made by HEC (good), Channelwell (I had two failures),
and Delta (OK, usually a loud fan). To identify a Channelwell,
you could pop the lid (look, but don't touch!), and see "CWT"
printed on the transformers.

This site has reviews and a forum.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/show...?t=3964&page=5

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews

"There are a total of 526 reviews on 53 pages"

So if I needed to datamine, I might try a

site:jonnyguru.com

as an added search term in my browser.

*******

Modern supplies can have a 20+4 and 4+4 connectors.
The first is the main connector, working with 20 pin
or 24 pin motherboards. Your motherboard is a 24 pin
motherboard.

The 4+4 splits into two pieces, supporting 2x2 ATX12V.
Or, on newer boards, they have room for a 2x4. On your
board, using a 2x4 helps when doing extreme overclocks.

The record for that, back in the era, was overclocking
a D805 to 4GHz. In which case it would draw 200W+ from
the 12V rail. That's when the 2x4 ATX12V setup helps.
For a lot of conventional applications, just the 2x2 portion
of the 2x4 is sufficient.

A 20 pin supply (old style) can still be used with a
24 pin motherboard. As long as pin 1 goes to pin 1.
The extra four pins just increase the ampacity, and
provide more +12V current flow for PCI Express slot power.
Cards like 6600 video used to draw 12V 4A from the slot.
Some of the more monstrous cards, they only draw 12V 2A
from the slot, so the "stress" on the 20 pin single
12V wire is a lot less in that case. The monster cards
have 2x3 or 2x4 PCI Express to carry the majority
of the power.

For pictures of connectors, how connectors split and the
like, this site is good.

http://www.playtool.com/pages/psucon...onnectors.html

Paul