wrote:
I have a Sony RB 38G computer that has had 3 power supply failures in
the last four months. The first one was 2 months after warranty
expired. When I had it replaced, the guy said that a connector on the
motherboard was a little burnt. He said he cleaned it up and that
there should not be a problem. He replaced it with a 450 watt Okia.
Three weeks later it went bad. He replaced it under the 30 day
warranty. Two months later it has failed again. Should I replace the
power supply with a better one than Okia, or should I replace the
motherboard and power supply? If I replace the motherboard, are there
any suggestions as to specific motherboards for this computer?

Why did the contacts overheat and burn? Because unless they were
loose, there had to be an overload from the mobo, either because of a
short to the case or the CPU voltage regulator straining because its
capacitors have gone bad.

Okia is really bad, and I can't believe that any legitimate technician
would install one. A 500W Okia is shown at the bottom of this page, to
the right of a 600W Enermax. Click on the photos to enlarge:

www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/enermaxeg701ax/

Notice how much less crowded the Okia is than the Enermax and how much
smaller its components are, especially the heatsinks, transformer (big
thing between the heatsinks), and output filter coils (donut coils at
the left). It doesn't even have an EMI line filter to reduce radio &
TV interference (see missing parts in upper right). This quality 300W
PSU looks a lot beefier (the EMI filter is near the bottom -- see the
two donut coils):

http://static.flickr.com/38/75117436_1de7a3142d.jpg