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Dirty power from house... Can it cause problems?

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steveeb

Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2005
Location
S. California
Ok, I've been having problems with this PSU for months. At first I thought the mb was bad, but after a lot of trial and error, I narrowed it down to the PSU. I was going to replace it with a Silverstone, but wound up keeping and putting up with the problems.

Everything was ok until today when it spontaneously rebooted my computer which then reported that I didn't have any hard drives. My first thought was I needed new drives, but after trying to reboot a few times and finding the raid was good one time and bad the next, I decided to swap out the PSU once again (with a cheapo HP oem) and everything booted fine.

I run a number of pieces of equipment for my business, including my computer, out of my home. One of these machines is constantly giving me an error that according to the manufacturer could be caused by low voltage from the house. I've measured the voltage at the outlet and I get anywhere from 100v to 110v depending on the time of day.

My question is, could these low voltage readings cause a PSU to throw fits? I would think that the PSU should be built to handle variable input voltages, but always give a constant steady output voltage. Also, I'm only having problems with one of my 4 PSU's so I'm thinking it really is time to replace it, but I thought I'd get some other opinions first.

Also, I had resently been looking at a Silverstone 560w, but have since lost the link to purchase it. If anyone knows where to find it for cheap let me know.
 
instead of buying a new PSU you could look at getting a relatively good sized UPS. They also act as line conditioners and SHOULD help to steady out the fluctuating voltages. The building I work in is about 50 years old and wasnt built to handle the Servers etc of today. We run through about 70k USD worth of UPS's a year. The new building that is supposed to be complete in 2k7 will have conditioned power at the branch from Va. Power so we will have no more brown outs.

The voltage fluctuations CAN but shouldnt cause issues. If the Fridge, TV, Dishwasher and laundry are all on at the same time that you have your computer on doing whatever the low voltage can put a strain on the internals of the PSU.
 
Yes, they can cause problems. I remember reading a thread on here about one guy who would have a pc in his room for like 3 weeks and it break. Put one in his parents room and it would go for months. (Power in his room was bad) I myself have actually experienced this(Or atleast I think this was the issue) with my HDD dieing multipul times in only a few months. I would agree, a UPS is what you sound like you need. Just make sure it's a good one that is on all the time and does not only come on when you have a power outage, also make sure it can support all of you hardware of course.
 
Then how come my cheapo HP 350w, Powerman 300w, and SmartBlue 350w all work without a hitch? Only my $100 Antec TP2 550 is giving me problems. :shrug:
 
BTW, a few weeks ago, I did some voltage readings with my DMM and found that the PSU 12v fluxuated anywhere from 10.5 on up to 12.3v. I will try it again and I will also take readings from the wall and let you know.
 
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