egathentale
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Update
🕑 Added 2023-10-04 07:52:28 +0000 UTCHello, dear readers.
So, my PC died this morning. So much for ramping things up, eh?
By the looks of it, the PSU shed its mortal coils, and hopefully it didn't take any of the other components with it. I ordered a replacement, but it will only arrive on Friday, which means I'm out of a PC until the weekend. So yeah, not fun.
This means the next update is practically guaranteed to be late again. I won't apologize this time, since this situation is completely out of my control. In any case, I'll update you as soon as I can. Till then, stay safe, and have a less annoying week than mine.
Ciao.
[Edit: Update to the update. Turns out, it wasn't the PSU, but the ATX cable. Or to be more precise, one of the bloody pins on the mobo side,m which should be bloody impossible, but hey, I'm apparently the universe's chew toy today.
...
Okay, listen. I imagine not all of you are tech-savvy enough to know what the heck I'm talking about, so here's a brief explanation. An ATX port is where the motherboard gets its power. It's this twenty-four pin monster where each pin has its own little plastic box around it, and you literally can't put the connector into the socket the wrong way, and so the brass pins always fit perfectly into each other. There should be literally no way for one of those bloody things to be bent, yet when I moved the cable around, out it popped. I tried to put it back, and it didn't seem to fit, so I took a closer look with a flashlight, and lo and behold, one of the pins was standing at an angle.
I never touched this particular port until today, so the only reasonable explanation I have is that it's been like that ever since I bought the PC three years ago. What must have happened was, as I told you guys about it, I upgraded my PC a bit a couple of weeks back, and I think that while I was installing the new RAM sticks, I bumped the ATX port (it's right next to the memory slots), which caused this particular pin to no longer have a solid connection.
It would also explain how I've been having sporadic system crashes, and why my PC didn't start this morning. You see, I found that one of the wooden floor tiles near my bed was slightly out of alignment, so I stomped on it to get it back to its proper place. The tremor caused the ATX cable to move just a tiiiny little bit, which meant the pin was no longer connecting, and that tripped some kind of safety feature and the mobo refused to turn on, which made me think it was a PSU problem.
The solution? Tiny tweezers to very gently straighten the pin, and an imperious push to fully secure the connector into the port, and guess what? Instant boot, and no stability issues whatsoever.
...
You know, some people say they have bad days. I know we are early into October, but so far, I'm having a bad month...
Comments
RageBone
Glad to hear that you managed to fix it. Being without a Computer sucks.
Egathentale
I originally bought this PC as a "skeleton"; since I hate dealing with cables and thermal pasting and all the mess, I ordered a basic mobo+PSU+CPU+case combo from an online shop, and then added the missing ingredients myself and upgraded it piecemeal. My current theory is that the technician assembling the components in the case back then just jammed everything together, and never noticed they *somehow* bent a pin. Don't ask how; if you look up what an ATX socket looks like, you'll see that each metal pin is housed individually, and there's *very* little space a bent pin can even go. Still, there was contact, and the PC booted, so they just shipped it. The problem only came to light now because when I replaced the RAM sticks the other week, I bumped into the the connector, and since it wasn't pushed all the way in (due to said pin), I moved it just enough for it to occasionally lose contact whenever the case moved or I wasn't walking softly enough around the room, and it caused crashes and my BIOS to reset, which are usually the symptoms of PSU failure. In short, it was either a manufacturing error the shop didn't notice when they put the order together, or something the technician did during assembly. Right now I'm just thankful the bloody thing didn't break either when it was assembled or when I was straightening the pin, otherwise I would be out of a mobo right now. Oh, and yes, I actually did order a replacement PSU already, because I was freaked out that if I didn't order in the morning, there was a chance it wouldn't arrive on Friday, and then I would've had to wait until Monday to have a working PC again. In retrospect, I'm not *that* annoyed though, as this way I will have a backup, and I've been considering upgrading my GPU around Christmas anyway, and the extra wattage might be helpful.
carebear90
I hope you didn't order the replacement yet? Do you think this was a case of planned obsolescence or an accidental manufacturing error?
