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Was failures on boot 12-16-17
Well as you guys suggested a year ago I installed a new power
supply today. Seasonic Focus 850. Old supply was PC Power and Cooling 610 watt. I've been dithering all year, replaced memory, reseating. The flakiness continued. I'm not really cheap about replacing parts, but I lost my workroom in my move and was scared about working on a pc without it. In putting the new memory in I discovered I can move my monitor elsewhere and work on the pc on my computer desk, it's not as handy as a dedicated bench but with care I can do some pc building. So... I felt brave enough to tackle the new supply. I had to go to Utube to discover how to turn on the supply with a jumper outside the machine. The fan didn't come on. Come to find out the fan doesn't work unless you push Hybrid switch. Also they sent a 'shorting plug' so no paper clip was necessary, but they didn't bother to tell me this with their no-instructions supply. I struggled some getting the new supply in, trying to be super-cautious, make sense of the cables they sent. Needed to order a molex extension cable to reach the corner jack on the mother board. It's a full-size Gigabyte case and their cables are a bit stingy. When I finally turned on I was surprised it worked. Almost. My 1000g disk was again transferring at 4mb/sec. Paul solved this problem for me last January. Device Manager shows 2nd Secondary IDE Channel in PIO mode. Per Paul's instructions I again uninstalled its driver and when it booted it was again in Ultra DMA 5 mode. So... that's the background, and for a whole year it's brief. Now, finally, my question: Along the way last year I acquired a KillOWatt meter. Actually not until I ordered the supply. It showed my old supply drew about 3 watts before I turned the pc on. With WindowsXP running I was a little over 100 watts. (why oh why did I splurge on a 850 watt supply?) The new supply also runs about 120 watts with Windows booted. BUT when I shut down and the pc turns off, THE KILLOWAT METER STILL SAYS I'M DRAWING 100 WATTS!!! I wouldn't much mind the constant 100 watts day and night if the supply is going to solve my flakiness problem, but what can be cooking with my pc turned off? |
#2
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Was failures on boot 12-16-17
On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 17:50:36 -0500, John B. Smith
wrote: Well as you guys suggested a year ago I installed a new power supply today. Seasonic Focus 850. Old supply was PC Power and Cooling 610 watt. I've been dithering all year, replaced memory, reseating. The flakiness continued. I'm not really cheap about replacing parts, but I lost my workroom in my move and was scared about working on a pc without it. In putting the new memory in I discovered I can move my monitor elsewhere and work on the pc on my computer desk, it's not as handy as a dedicated bench but with care I can do some pc building. So... I felt brave enough to tackle the new supply. I had to go to Utube to discover how to turn on the supply with a jumper outside the machine. The fan didn't come on. Come to find out the fan doesn't work unless you push Hybrid switch. Also they sent a 'shorting plug' so no paper clip was necessary, but they didn't bother to tell me this with their no-instructions supply. I struggled some getting the new supply in, trying to be super-cautious, make sense of the cables they sent. Needed to order a molex extension cable to reach the corner jack on the mother board. It's a full-size Gigabyte case and their cables are a bit stingy. When I finally turned on I was surprised it worked. Almost. My 1000g disk was again transferring at 4mb/sec. Paul solved this problem for me last January. Device Manager shows 2nd Secondary IDE Channel in PIO mode. Per Paul's instructions I again uninstalled its driver and when it booted it was again in Ultra DMA 5 mode. So... that's the background, and for a whole year it's brief. Now, finally, my question: Along the way last year I acquired a KillOWatt meter. Actually not until I ordered the supply. It showed my old supply drew about 3 watts before I turned the pc on. With WindowsXP running I was a little over 100 watts. (why oh why did I splurge on a 850 watt supply?) The new supply also runs about 120 watts with Windows booted. BUT when I shut down and the pc turns off, THE KILLOWAT METER STILL SAYS I'M DRAWING 100 WATTS!!! I wouldn't much mind the constant 100 watts day and night if the supply is going to solve my flakiness problem, but what can be cooking with my pc turned off? Forget it. The dummy forgot to put the meter back on watts setting when I put it back into the circuit. Dunno what I was reading, but wasn't watts. Mea Culpa. |
#3
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Was failures on boot 12-16-17
John B. Smith wrote:
Forget it. The dummy forgot to put the meter back on watts setting when I put it back into the circuit. Dunno what I was reading, but wasn't watts. Mea Culpa. It was probably on volts rather than watts. I think the default at input-side power-up is volts. Because the buttons on the Kill-O-Watt are "soft" controls, the meter might "lose its mind" every time the input power side is disconnected. Regular multimeters use rotary mechanical switches to "remember" what they were doing. Auto-ranging multimeters still need to be switched to a "major range", like volts-amps-ohms, and the meter fiddles with the gain to output a correct reading. My Kill-O-Watt P4400 is purely "soft" controls. ******* And a PC doesn't have to use a lot of power. We might buy slightly more powerful supplies, in a search for a "quality" supply. If you were to buy a 350W supply for $20, it would probably expire in the first day of usage. Moving up the power scale, puts you in mid-tier products. Even companies that make their own power supplies, might "contract out" the $20 one. It's the same as with UPS uninterruptable power supplies. You can get one for $50 say, but the out of the box failure rate is around 10%. (We bought a quantity of them at work, and that was the failure rate on first testing them. No fires or smoke, but no UPS action either.) Sometimes you can spot this in the Newegg reviews before it is too late. My PC used to be 100W to 200W, with a cheap video card. The power range with a new video card got me from 100W to 350W. The "Furmark" program loads the video card up, so the machine hits 350W. That's still not a lot of power. You might be able to squeak by with a 450W or a 550W, but the 450W might prematurely age if it ended up running at high temperature. Modern 80+ supplies are more efficient and don't kick out quite as much waste heat. If you had only a $50 video card, and a couple hard drives, a 350W supply might cover your needs. Are there any quality supplies at that power level ? Maybe, or maybe not. Jonnyguru.com has power supply reviews, and sometimes an item you see for sale, has been reviewed, and you can get additional information before buying. Paul |
#4
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Was failures on boot 12-16-17
On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 22:12:46 -0500, Paul wrote:
Jonnyguru.com has power supply reviews, and sometimes an item you see for sale, has been reviewed, and you can get additional information before buying. Regarding PSU sizing, most of what I've read in recent years, (with the Bronze and Gold etc. labeling), seems to agree that you want the PSU to be running at about 50% of its rated capacity because it's most efficient there. Does that sound about right? |
#5
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Was failures on boot 12-16-17
Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 22:12:46 -0500, Paul wrote: Jonnyguru.com has power supply reviews, and sometimes an item you see for sale, has been reviewed, and you can get additional information before buying. Regarding PSU sizing, most of what I've read in recent years, (with the Bronze and Gold etc. labeling), seems to agree that you want the PSU to be running at about 50% of its rated capacity because it's most efficient there. Does that sound about right? The review sites can tell you that, the ones with the gear to test. I don't recollect off hand, there being a strong curve shape for all of them (all alike). It's a bit of wavey gravy. Numerically, you would not expect them to be infinitely efficient at low power output, but if a supply was meeting 87% at 100W, there is little heat output to be expected from the supply, so you're still winning big time. Paul |
#6
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Was failures on boot 12-16-17
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 10:01:10 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote: On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 22:12:46 -0500, Paul wrote: Jonnyguru.com has power supply reviews, and sometimes an item you see for sale, has been reviewed, and you can get additional information before buying. Regarding PSU sizing, most of what I've read in recent years, (with the Bronze and Gold etc. labeling), seems to agree that you want the PSU to be running at about 50% of its rated capacity because it's most efficient there. Does that sound about right? Sounds like mine is running un-efficiently at 100/850. I don't care long as it keeps working. It's 80 Platinum. Users on NewEgg have experienced premature failures anyway. One at 9 day point. It seems to have cured my "complaining fan" beep on start-up when some fan spins up too slow and my BIOS? doesn't like it. I think that started after I added a bigger fan on my cpu. (I had ambitions of overclocking in those days) I had to mount the new supply at the top of case with this case, so the fan points down. Darn if I can see if it's spinning behind its grill or not. Trying to think of some non-damaging article I can poke up in there to check. If the 'Hybrid' switch is not on the fan is only supposed to run when the supply is hot enough. Right now I'm leaving the fan running all the time. My old supply lived with a running fan for 10 years. Though it's fan was considerable smaller. Fan is silent to my hearing-aided ears. After a few more days of successful operation I've got to lace up some cables in there. |
#7
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Was failures on boot 12-16-17
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 15:02:48 -0500, John B. Smith wrote:
| On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 10:01:10 -0600, Char Jackson | wrote: | | On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 22:12:46 -0500, Paul wrote: | | Jonnyguru.com has power supply reviews, and sometimes | an item you see for sale, has been reviewed, and you | can get additional information before buying. | | Regarding PSU sizing, most of what I've read in recent years, (with the | Bronze and Gold etc. labeling), seems to agree that you want the PSU to | be running at about 50% of its rated capacity because it's most | efficient there. Does that sound about right? | | Sounds like mine is running un-efficiently at 100/850. I don't care | long as it keeps working. It's 80 Platinum. Users on NewEgg have | experienced premature failures anyway. One at 9 day point. It seems to | have cured my "complaining fan" beep on start-up when some fan spins | up too slow and my BIOS? doesn't like it. I think that started after I | added a bigger fan on my cpu. (I had ambitions of overclocking in | those days) I had to mount the new supply at the top of case with this | case, so the fan points down. Darn if I can see if it's spinning | behind its grill or not. Trying to think of some non-damaging article | I can poke up in there to check. If the 'Hybrid' switch is not on the | fan is only supposed to run when the supply is hot enough. Right now | I'm leaving the fan running all the time. My old supply lived with a | running fan for 10 years. Though it's fan was considerable smaller. | Fan is silent to my hearing-aided ears. After a few more days of | successful operation I've got to lace up some cables in there. I have a 750W Corsair 80 Plus Gold in my main PC. If the fan on it has ever run, I'm not aware of it. There's a case filter on the bottom, under the PSU fan, and it's still as clean as it was when the case was new. Larc |
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