I picked up a Dell 145W PSU off eBay a while ago. I just recently finished an adapter so I could plug it into an ATX motherboard. Everything seemed to work fine. But on occasion it freezes up when booting. Usually during the POST. Once the OS is up and running it has yet to fail. Is there anything particular going on during POST that would cause more stress to the PSU and therefore cause it to hang?
Thanks
PSU Instability at bootup
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee, Devonavar
-
BillyBuerger
- Patron of SPCR
- Posts: 857
- Joined: Fri Dec 27, 2002 1:49 pm
- Location: Somerset, WI - USA
- Contact:
-
dukla2000
- *Lifetime Patron*
- Posts: 1465
- Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2003 12:27 pm
- Location: Reading.England.EU
Yes - during boot/POST the load on the PSU is about as heavy as it gets. There is no BIOS/OS halting of the CPU, and the hdds and optical drives are spinning up. So any instability at this stage is often a symptom of a psu that can't cope. The high load from the drives can go on for 10-30 seconds, also any fans starting up can draw double their normal power for 2-5 seconds.
If you want to stick to that psu, then make sure there are no disks in the optical & floppy drives. Also you may be able to relieve the symptoms if you go straight to BIOS, wait for everything to get up to speed, then exit to POST/boot.
The other thing would be to check your loads and try shift some of them. About the only option here is to 5V fans instead of 12V. Or undervolt/underclock the CPU. Also check the psu specs for max loads (and maybe it even quotes peak loads) on the rails.
If you want to stick to that psu, then make sure there are no disks in the optical & floppy drives. Also you may be able to relieve the symptoms if you go straight to BIOS, wait for everything to get up to speed, then exit to POST/boot.
The other thing would be to check your loads and try shift some of them. About the only option here is to 5V fans instead of 12V. Or undervolt/underclock the CPU. Also check the psu specs for max loads (and maybe it even quotes peak loads) on the rails.