[Cialug] Burned out power supply

[Colin Burnett]

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 12:01 PM,  <murraymckee at wellsfargo.com> wrote:
> I bought a new computer 2 1/2 years ago, summer '07.  After 18 months, ...  This Christmas ('09) the same thing happened again.

As others have chimed in: which PSU's did you replace them with?  I
too have had PSU woes in the past and I have since switched to Antec
branded PSU's (I highly doubt they make their own).  I'd have to think
long and hard about when I replaced mine last but I'm quite easily
over 4 years now.  (KDE 3.5 -> 4.3 has killed performance on my 2 GHz
Athlon 64.)

As far as power quality goes, switch-mode PSU's are often the worst
offenders of power quality.  They've come a long way, but they can do
quite horrific things.  I'd be more apt to blame your PSU for causing
bad power quality than blame your bad power quality for killing your
PSU's.  I recall a story by a colleague who found the neutral bus bar
in the basement of the Wallace Building glowing because the power
quality was so horrendous from computers that the neutral wire carried
far more current than designed.

[Offtopic: I await the day when it is common practice to run -48VDC
(like telephones) in parallel or in lieu of 120 VAC.  Why?  Name
anything in a modern house that doesn't use VDC somehow (except light
bulbs (unless you're talking LED)).  Everything has a wall-wart.]


Colin