Been offline: PSU bricked

Thanks Nolan, dgd is here now and has given me a 30 minute notice of impending bedtime. Nothing and no one more important to me than my family.

The PSU was an interesting ? exercise: Started with the arrival of my new HP VH240a Monitor and a decision to replace the noisy CM fans, which were frazzling my nerves. Decided to move an upper fan over, which I now think caused a problem with the 12V CPU cable. Boxed everything up and did what I always do, just connect the bare box with only PSU connected. All fans fired up, so I connected everything and restarted. Deader than Diplodocus doo-doo. Checked the LED’s at the network switch and the PC ethernet LED would not fire up. Tried the same connection in all ports: no LED, but the NAS and input from router, worked on all ports. I removed the PSU and used my trusty tester to find the culprit was the CPU 12V rail. On the part-modular Corsair 750M, there are two cables for this, but both are fixed and emerge from the PSU body together, with the main 24 pin rail. Neither would work.

On the new, much later 550M, those cables are now modular. I fitted the 550M and it all worked, as did the lovely new monitor, which I thoroughly recommend, especially if your eyesight is now as poor as mine. The difference between the HP and my old Iiyama, is fantastic: I appear to have about half an acre of screen. And the fans are maintaining optimum cool, which is maintaining my optimum cool.

Thanks to Dave R for the Ebuyer link to the HP VH240a:     http://tinyurl.com/yckvh3u6     < £125

Tomorrow I will fit my new Hauppage DVB-T2 TV tuner.

That is so right Steve, had it before, air turns blue.?

Best 2 pieces of kit I ever bought, was a PSU tester and an ethernet cable tester. Using the PSU tester, I could see straightaway that the PSU 12V CPU rail was u/s, which takes out lots of guesswork and possibly buying a replacement for something else that is not u/s. The PSU tester was a spur of the minute purchase at a computer place on Hemswell Cliff Sunday market. As usual, it has “Made in China” on it. Hemswell is one of the many WWII and Cold War ex- RAF bases in Lincolnshire. Being an ex – V Bomber base, it is massive and the market has everything you could possibly want to buy. The computer place has loads of stuff, from latest kit to really old gear:

http://tinyurl.com/yajudv79

Sunday is the best day if anyone wanted to see it, but it’s open all week. One Sunday there was a Pet Stall on the market, pups to reptiles. Now they have bought one of the buildings. The Sunday Car Boot is unbelievable.