Ole Juul
Veteran Member
When I built my main desktop, just over 6 years ago, I decided to get a decent power supply that wasn't too expensive. A Zalman ZM400B-APS 400W PSU turned out to be quite nice, very quiet, and about 100 bucks as I recall. I figured it would maybe last through a couple of computers. As it turned out, it went into my recent new build and worked just fine.
Fast forward to two days ago. It's been pretty cold here. In fact it has warmed up a lot in the last two days and even then it's still only -12°C (10°F). Anyway, I was sitting here at my computer downstairs, freezing my hands and *** off, because this ancient leaky old building is about as warm on nights like that as city folk expect outside in the winter. This is great for computer gear. The temperature inside my computer box was showing around +12°C. - a couple over the room temperature. When BANG! I heard that sound of something exploding that isn't supposed to. . . . It took me a few seconds to realize that it was my new computer (there are two other ones on at the time) and my heart sank. Eileen called down from upstairs: "what was that?" Black screen. Quad core. 8GB RAM. Silence.
After I regained my senses, I quickly diagnosed that it was the power supply which had given me the last bang for my buck. I took it apart, no smell, and I couldn't immediately find the offending part because it's packed so dense in there. I could almost have thought it was an insect getting fried, I'm very familiar with that one, but they're not nearly as loud and they do smell. Anyway, it was a short time until I had replaced it with a backup, and started looking for a replacement from Newegg.
Things are fine again. I did a pro job of diagnosis and repair. And I think I got my money's worth out of the Zalman. It seems like an odd failure though. It's been running 24/7 for so many years mostly in a slightly-too-hot environment, and then on the coldest day it's ever encountered, in a new big and very well ventilated case, it's a gonner. Go figure.
Fast forward to two days ago. It's been pretty cold here. In fact it has warmed up a lot in the last two days and even then it's still only -12°C (10°F). Anyway, I was sitting here at my computer downstairs, freezing my hands and *** off, because this ancient leaky old building is about as warm on nights like that as city folk expect outside in the winter. This is great for computer gear. The temperature inside my computer box was showing around +12°C. - a couple over the room temperature. When BANG! I heard that sound of something exploding that isn't supposed to. . . . It took me a few seconds to realize that it was my new computer (there are two other ones on at the time) and my heart sank. Eileen called down from upstairs: "what was that?" Black screen. Quad core. 8GB RAM. Silence.
After I regained my senses, I quickly diagnosed that it was the power supply which had given me the last bang for my buck. I took it apart, no smell, and I couldn't immediately find the offending part because it's packed so dense in there. I could almost have thought it was an insect getting fried, I'm very familiar with that one, but they're not nearly as loud and they do smell. Anyway, it was a short time until I had replaced it with a backup, and started looking for a replacement from Newegg.
Things are fine again. I did a pro job of diagnosis and repair. And I think I got my money's worth out of the Zalman. It seems like an odd failure though. It's been running 24/7 for so many years mostly in a slightly-too-hot environment, and then on the coldest day it's ever encountered, in a new big and very well ventilated case, it's a gonner. Go figure.
but the video card is a small step up, partly to get better Xorg support. It's a Radeon 3450 with passive cooling. I believe it eats a max of 25-30 Watts or so. My new CPU is of the 55 Watt variety. Also, I made an error in saying quad core above - it's actually a dual core Ivy Bridge (i3-3220). I can't remember what the old single core drew, but I think it was a lot more than that (90W?). All in all, the power draw on my new computer is probably about the same as my old one. After I figured out what happened, it did occur to me that perhaps I should have added some things up instead of just assuming.