A failed +5V rail is pretty typical of Antec power supply failures,
especially the TruePower series. My brother's True550 failed in exactly this
way. This is the cause of your system instability.
Within 2 weeks, I had another (200mi apart) Antec True550EPS12V fail to a
brilliant display of sparks and smoke.
Both of the machines with failed Antec supplies did have a heavy load, but
the load did not exceed the power supply specifications. In the first case,
the supply was replaced with a Fortron/Sparkle 550 watt unit. The second
system's PSU was replaced by an overnight air SeaSonic S12-600w ($160+23SH).
I will never purchase another Antec supply. PCP&C (though that 850W unit
does not really impress me with 4 +12V rails), SeaSonic, and
Fortron/SPI/Sparkle now make my Top Three list.
Greg
----- Original Message -----
From: "warpmedia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "The Hardware List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 9:02 AM
Subject: [H] Another Antec bites the dust?
Well it looks like I have a failing Antec PSU. Basically my 5V line is
never more than 4.55 and averages 4.49 or almost 10% out of spec on a 5%
spec PSU. Waiting now to see if Antec agrees.
What got me started was a MBM alert about +5V line 5% out of tolerance,
combined with recent happenings of system rebooting itself once on power
up (power up, boot, windows, reboot, windows, ok). Occasionally I'd get
the boot menu on second boot asking if I wanted safe mode, etc...
Yes, the system is a XP-M that's been OC'd and I had chalked it up to
something with heat (too cold to work at start up? lol) but nothing other
than 5V power has changed in a year. I clocked back the multiplier to 11x
and verified all settings as baseline (200Mhz, 1.6V core, 2.6V DDR,
etc...) in the BIOS. Still the PSU is 4.49V as I type this. While the
system has not ever rebooted during several hours of gaming, it has frozen
when left idle overnight the past week or so a few times.
Certainly not thrilled with the idea of the system being down for
replacement PSU. Nor am I thrilled with getting a replacement from Antec
for rear I am yet another victim of an Antec failure. Worse this is not a
week I can afford to buy another PSU =<
