Wandy wrote:
Hi, newbie here...I dont know a lot about P.Cs and really need help.

My 8 week old P.C, custom built from a (supposedly) reputable Ebay
store has died on me and I am distraught.

The PSU has died on the machine. I know this because I have made
'progress' by fitting a new PSU. When the original PSU failed the
machine would not power up at all, but would momentarily stutter in
to life as I pressed the case power switch but would then die as I
let go of the switch.

By fitting a new PSU I can get the machine to power on. The processor
fan starts to run but nothing else happens. There is no 'beep' sound
that is normally heard as the machine boots up. The large LED light
on the front of the case that used to illuminate green when the
machine was switched on now illuminates red.

My friend says that the PSU has probably blown my motherboard and told
me to check the capacitors to see if they look swollen. I have done
this but they look ok.

My machine spec is as follows:- Pentium 4 3GHz, 2GB RAM, ASRock 775
VM800 motherboard, 80Gb HD, 450W 'Win Power'??? PSU, X-Blade case.

To be honest I have had my doubts about the machine since I got it
because when I think about it now there has always been a strange
smell eminating from it. Also whenever I was using the machine and
running programs the tone of the fan running inside the machine used
to dip up and down. Is this normal?

The machine is under warranty but I am livid about the prospect of
sending it back after only 8 weeks, espacially when I have to cover
the courier costs. If I send it back I am concerned they will simply
replace the damaged PSU with one of exactly the same type, because my
hunch is that the PSU is a poor quality one.

So what do you think? Has the PSU ruined my machine or is there
something that I have missed?

Your help would be very much appreciated!!!!

You have to be careful about cheap power supplies. I read a review once
about a 520 watt power supply. It was in fact 520 watts, but it was 520
Watts INPUT! I thought my power supply died recently (it was almost
dead anyway). The actual problem was a stop error causing windows to
reboot (found later when I disabled auto reboot) due to a bad sound
driver. I'm still glad I replaced it as the +5V rail was droping below
4.6 V. That reminds me, I need to connect the power to the firewire
card (finally found out what that connector was for) and change a few
jumpers to prevent an overload on 5VSB.