Seasonic S12-500 dead...again!

ct991 · Post by **ct991** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:24 pm

I purchased an S12-500 with my new system in November, and a week after I bought it, it died. So I got a new one, which was running fine until yesterday...then zap. It would power-on for a second then turn off.

I know of the issues with DFI motherboards but I have an Asus A8N-SLI and I haven't seen anything discussed about this combination causing problems. I took both pieces back to the retailer, where they tested them and the motherboard booted just fine with a different PS, but the Seasonic PS was doing the same on-off business with other motherboards.

Is there something else going on here...or am I just really unlucky??

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 5:18 pm

ct991 wrote:Is there something else going on here...or am I just really unlucky??

There isn't much you can be doing wrong. Most likely you're just extremely unlucky, or your house has unstable power. An acquintance of mine lives in an apartment and he has power outages on a weekly basis, which takes its toll on the computer.

ct991 · Post by **ct991** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 6:04 pm

As far as I know, the power should not be an issue. It's a newish house and I'm using a high-end APC surge protector/power filter and we almost never have blackouts.

I'm wondering if I may be drawing too much current in my room. I've got 3 PCs powered-up sometimes, along with a 19" CRT and a 24" LCD, and a home theater receiver and 200 CD jukebox. This should be well below 1800W though. I haven't ever tripped the circuit breaker.

Is there anything else power-wise I haven't considered?

pony-tail · Post by **pony-tail** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:30 pm

These PSUs (although the 240 v version) would not play nice with my A8N-SLI premium.
In fact the only one I have found that works with my board is a Silverstone that most SPCR
readers would shudder at .
But I would check your psu on another system , it could be just compatability issues.

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:53 pm

There may be something about many newish boards that doesn't play nice with true ATX12V v2.xx spec'd PSUs, of which the Seasonic S12 is one.

I heard recently that in order to allow backward compatibility with older spec PSUs (???), some boards delay powering up the 12V line for a brief pause at the very start of the boot process. This triggers a too-low 12V load condition to the PSU, which then powers down. Most PSUs have something like a 1A minimum on their lines. You might just try adding another HDD or two just to see if this changes things.

Why the S12 would develop the problem over time is difficult to say...

bakerzdosen · Post by **bakerzdosen** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:57 pm

It's funny. I've had my S12-500 since August. Everything was going fine. Then, one day, after powering it off the night before, it wouldn't boot the next morning. After messing around with things for a while, I got it to boot again. Rebooted fine and everything.

I powered it down, and lo and behold, it took quite some doing to get it to boot again. I played BF2 for a while, then fired up a browser. Two web pages later, boom, it powered off. I haven't been able to get it to power up since. All signs point to the PS, so I was looking here to see if there were issues with the s12-500.

Funny that... four posts down I find this. I guess it's headed back to Seasonic.

Too bad.

I'm running on an EVGA mobo, and it's attached to a Belkin enterprise UPS.

I guess the only saving grace is that someone on the EVGA boards had the same problem with an Antec TruPower 500w PS.

If I had another system to test it on (it won't exactly plug right in to my Macs or Dell) I would, buuuut...

Kinda obvious from the symptoms that this is my problem too, so thanks for the post.

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:26 pm

MikeC, very interesting about the PSUs.. i was trying to run my biostar tforce6100 from an old PSU (we're talking ~9yrs old.. so no idea what ATX spec.. but 200w and good quality).. and the only way i could get it to power on was by endlessly hammering the power/reset buttons very quickly (its amazing what a bit of frustration can lead u to discover lol). trying to turn it on normally would move the fans an inch and the power light would come on.. but then go off immediately.
but then once it started up, it ran absolutely fine for days..
and now i have a new PSU it powers up normally like it should..

so, could this be related to what you were saying?.. would hammering the buttons just be putting a little power into the capacitors or something?.. or would there be a more methodic way of getting it to power on with an old psu?

Post by **MikeC** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:35 pm

mb2 --

I dunno about your PSU, really. The problem with recent motherboards is basically limited to high efficiency models, mostly, as they have a higher minimum current required before they will boot. Typically at least 1A on the 12V line. Older / less efficient PSUs have lower minimums -- more like .8A or .5A, which means they are not usuallly affected.

I did find out why the mobo makers put in the 12VC turn on delay: ATX12V v2.xx requires a 240VA limit. So if you have a powerful CPU, a hot vidcard and other components pulling on the 12V line at startup, it could hit the 240VA limit and the PSU current limiter could/would kick in and stop the system from booting up. So to avoid this problem, they put the delay in. They didn't forsee the high efficiency PSU models needing more current to boot.

It's a comedy of errors... caused mostly by components that demand too much power and Intel needlessly imposing that 240VA limit in their ATX12V spec. It needs to be officially removed.

thetoad30 · Post by **thetoad30** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 9:38 pm

Hey guys,

I've had my S12-500W since early July '05. Haven't had a single problem yet with mine.

I'm assuming it's because I've always had enough of a pull on the 12V line, as I have 4 HDD's.

However, there had been times when I had nothing but the CPU, Motherboard, and Video Card powered up, and the PSU ran just fine.

I'm just trying to give you guys some things to cross off perhaps, or to try if anything. Hopefully mine won't be next...

bakerzdosen · Post by **bakerzdosen** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:14 pm

Folks,
I need to retract my "negative" comments about my PSU. Up to the point that it failed, I had nothing but positive things to say about it.

The thing is, it never failed.

I'm glad I kept on testing. As it turns out, my Scythe Ninja seems to be the problem - at least from my mobo's point of view. I'm still not 100% on the problem, but I found if I pressed down on the ninja, the system booted. Release, and poof, no power. I'm not gonna thread hijack, so that's all I'll say.

So anyway, sorry about yours ct991, but it seems as though (as I said, I'm not 100%, but it looks that way) my problem isn't related to my S12-500.

So I'm back to two thumbs up with mine.

pony-tail · Post by **pony-tail** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:11 am

However, there had been times when I had nothing but the CPU, Motherboard, and Video Card powered up, and the PSU ran just fine.

When I tried one It seemed to work fine then would just reboot or shut down after a while .
this issue seems to be worst on Asus boards - only had it one day , took it back to dealer
Worked fine on an Intel board socket T I do not know model . But it is working without issue
on my Son inlaw's PressHot machine ( I could not get a refund because it was not faulty )
I assumed the mobo to be faulty and RMAd it and the new one does the same . So someone
is not playing by the rules.
That said my Silverstone PSU works fine on the problematic board - It is a touchy issue because
minor changes in hardware (like adding a second video card make a previously stable system go screwy) and to complicate things further I bought the board after 2 of my friends bought them
one is running an FX55 the other a 3200+ no problems - I am running an X2 and sli 7800GTs
the guy running the FX55 has a 7800gtx and the one with the 3200+ has Sli 6600s. so although
they have the same mobo the systems are very different - we have different Ram and hard drive brands and models.
It has me beat.

thetoad30 · Post by **thetoad30** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:21 am

You are right; that is weird.

I have an Asus P5AD2-E Premium board. It is Socket T (LGA775) with a Prescott (first, original model) 3.4 GHz.

This is going to sound weird... but it's a theory...

Intel is the one who designed the ATX12V specs. This was because the CPU's started to draw so much on the 12V line that it needed a seperate, dedicated rail of it's own.

You are using an AMD X2 system, from what I've heard, with a much lower power draw on the 12V system.

Perhaps Intel's specs were never meant for lower power draw such as this? (as per Mike C's suggestion above)

What this brings to light, however, is the Yonah/Dothan and the new Core Duo chips. Perhaps something with the Northbridge or lack thereof?

I don't know... these are, like I said, just theories... I would love to be proved/disproved if someone know's the truth... anything to know what's really going on here. Because like I said before, my Seasonic has been faithful and unforgiving with whatever I've thrown at it! And I do throw everything I have at it!

Mandachuva · Post by **Mandachuva** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:26 pm

MB2 :

Had the same problem (and the same method of making it work) with a generic (AKA crappy) old PSU and it turned out to be bulging output caps. Considering you say that your PSU is old, and electrolythic caps are known to dry up with time, especially under hot conditions - the PSU interior, for example

-, I would say the problem comes from the caps. More reasons for this, but I'm to lazy to explain (something about smaller capacitive resistance with a warm cap, as opposed to a cold one).

To me, toad30's problem seems to be something else...

Seasonic S12-500 dead...again!

Seasonic S12-500 dead...again!

Re: Seasonic S12-500 dead...again!

um, me too...?