Dead/dying Antec NeoPower 480?

[kloostec]

Hey, figure that this is a good place to try to figure out what's wrong with my box.

I bought an Antec NeoPower 480 power supply for my computer about 6 months ago. It has been rock solid up to this point.

I was doing some misc. computer work today (DVD-RW firmware flashes, mobo flash, driver updates for my WinXP install), and my computer froze, then turned off while booting. All of the flashes had been completed at least three or four reboots before this happened. It will now no longer start; it turns itself off after less than half a second.

I suspect it's a power supply issue, but I thought I'd check with some people who know what they're doing before I RMA it. I don't particularly want to plug the thing back in and try it for any extended length of time, as last time I tried that, sparks and burning smells ensued.

Complete System Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (heat spreader removed) l stock speeds
Abit AV8 motherboard (flashed to BIOS 19)
4x512MB DDR400 RAM l 333 MHz, 2T, 2.5-3-3-8 (2x Samsung, 2x Corsair ValueRam), total 2GB dual channel
2x Seagate 80GB 7200.7 SATA
2x Seagate 80GB 7200.7 IDE
1x Maxtor 120GB 7200.7 IDE
Sapphire Radeon 9700 w/Zalman passive heatsink
SB Audigy Gamer
ATI TV Wonder VE
One of those cheap gigabit cards
Plextor 716-A DVD-RW (flashed to 1.06)
Zalman 7000-AlCu
Vantec Nexus fan controller
5x Panaflo 80mm fan
Antec NeoPower 480W
CyberPower 1250AVR UPS

I typically run Gentoo Linux AMD64 on the machine and use it as a workstation, server, and router, but this morning I stuck in a Maxtor 60GB 5400RPM hard drive (I unplugged one of the Seagate 80GB IDEs in order to do this) today that has XP on it so that I could do the Plextor DVD-RW flash. I was updating the drivers on the XP install when the computer stopped booting.

 

[montag451]

Originally posted by: kloostec
I suspect it's a power supply issue, but I thought I'd check with some people who know what they're doing before I RMA it. I don't particularly want to plug the thing back in and try it for any extended length of time, as last time I tried that, sparks and burning smells ensued.
.

ummmm

 

[FlyingPenguin]

PSU fried, almost certainly. Mobo fried, possibly. Maybe more damage.

One of two things happened: either a component in the PSU failed and shorted out, or a component on the mobo (or one of the cards) failed and shorted out (which would have also killed the PSU). Either way, this could be ugly. Likely culprit in both cases is a capacitor.

It's hard to kill RAM or a CPU in this manner but possible.

Only way to diagnose this is to swap each component out with a known good component, or test parts from your rig in a known good system. I'd test your CPU and RAM first in another rig, then try swapping out your PSU next and watch for smoke (if you use a good quality PSU it won't allow itself to be turned on if it detects a short).

If you haven't got a spare rig to play with then your best option would be to take it to a small mom & pop computer shop (NOT a large chain store!) and ask them to check it all out and give you an estimate. Most small shops have a reasonable fee to just check it all and give you an opinion - some might even give free estimates.

Also check your documentation and see if anything is still under warranty. Even if you replace it, you could still RMA it and then sell it later.

 

[Chesebert]

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin
PSU fried, almost certainly. Mobo fried, possibly. Maybe more damage.

One of two things happened: either a component in the PSU failed and shorted out, or a component on the mobo (or one of the cards) failed and shorted out (which would have also killed the PSU). Either way, this could be ugly. Likely culprit in both cases is a capacitor.

It's hard to kill RAM or a CPU in this manner but possible.

Only way to diagnose this is to swap each component out with a known good component, or test parts from your rig in a known good system. I'd test your CPU and RAM first in another rig, then try swapping out your PSU next and watch for smoke (if you use a good quality PSU it won't allow itself to be turned on if it detects a short).

If you haven't got a spare rig to play with then your best option would be to take it to a small mom & pop computer shop (NOT a large chain store!) and ask them to check it all out and give you an estimate. Most small shops have a reasonable fee to just check it all and give you an opinion - some might even give free estimates.

Also check your documentation and see if anything is still under warranty. Even if you replace it, you could still RMA it and then sell it later.

I second that

 

[kloostec]

Note: When I mentioned smoke and burning smells, that was a totallly different instance, a totally different computer, and a totally different set of circumstances. I don't want to repeat this with my computer!

Note2: I work at a computer helpdesk. I have years of experience troubleshooting machines, but my hardware fault/dying power supplies knowledge is limited. I'm asking because I don't know specifics...

Thanks for the help so far

 

[jackschmittusa]

It could just as easily be a bad fan on the cpu, as the mb will shut everything down if it does not get a fan signal in a couple of seconds of startup.

 

[kloostec]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
It could just as easily be a bad fan on the cpu, as the mb will shut everything down if it does not get a fan signal in a couple of seconds of startup.

Yeah, I thought about this, but it shuts down within half a second of turning it on, even when the box has been cold for hours. There is good heatsink contact, so I can't imagine it overheating that fast.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

I would pull ALL cards and disconnect all drives in case one of them is causing a short. See if it works.

Another possibility is a shorted power switch. If you hold down the power switch for 4 seconds it forces a shut down - if it's shorted this is exactly what will happen. Try using the reset switch for the power switch temporarily to eliminate that possibility.

Next swap out the PSU with a spare. If that doesn't fix it then it's probably a mobo issue.

 

[LucLin]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
It could just as easily be a bad fan on the cpu, as the mb will shut everything down if it does not get a fan signal in a couple of seconds of startup.

:thumbsup: I second that as a good start point.

I had the same problem a few weeks ago. Suddenly my computer just began refusing to boot, no matter what I tried. After days & nights fighting it (more nights than days :disgust: ) at the end it was just the motherboard shutting everything down because it wasn't getting any signal from the CPU fan (even though it was spinning ). All I had to do was only to disable the motherboard's protection feature on the BIOS and then life, as a magic, returned to my system. :beer:

I hope this is all that happened to you as well. No mess, no loss.... avoid RMAs & save your bucks.

 

[Jarhead1899]

Kloostec,

Did you ever get a solution to this?

 

[HAM617]

Ram will also do this. Try reseating
Also take a look in the case to make sure you didn't knock anything off when You were plugging in the case. Like CPU fan connector etc. Sometimes it's something stupid.

 

[kloostec]

I talked with Antec, and they decided that the best way to deal with this is to just RMA the power supply, before I actually caused any harm to my other parts. Once I received the replacement, I had no problems.

 

[Godsmack74]

Shorted power switch in my case. Awesome work FlyingPenguin!!