Extend the life of my poor PC.

[lesion]

What kind of smell? I don't think smells are good things. You definitely do not want a smell.

[NiX]

It's hard to explain. The closest I can relate it to is burning croûtons.

[Salamok]

Help me extend the life of my computer too. As of a couple days ago one of my fans decided it was going to make some weird noises and today a smell started emanating from my computer. So I turned it off and on again with the case open to try and resolve which fan needs replacing. I can't figure it out. I've slowed my power supply fan, quickly stopped my CPU fan and fiddled with the motherboard fan. None stop the sound. When I start up the computer it sounds like it's coming from the CPU fan, but I can't tell for sure. Any suggestions? I'd hate to go out and buy something I don't need.

you have 1 or more blown capacitors, either on your motherboard or in your PSU.  you can usually eyeball them and see if any of them are split or bubbled out at the top.

here you go this goes into what to look for: http://www.auroracomputer.ca/bad_capacitors.htm

[hal]

For the noises use a long screwdriver and place it on each fan non moving surface with your ear pressed against the handle.

[Miasma]

Sounds are surprisingly hard to pin down inside a case.  I could have swore one of my hard drives was making a weird noise but it turned out to be a case fan...

[NiX]

you have 1 or more blown capacitors, either on your motherboard or in your PSU.  you can usually eyeball them and see if any of them are split or bubbled out at the top.

I can't find a blow capacitor even after using my lamp as a light source and having the images from the website beside me. Some capacitors look tilted but there was no bubbly stuff to be seen. I don't know if it's ok to touch, so I decided not to clear the dust away just in case.

[Engels]

If you have dust, you may want to vaccum. The smell might have simply been a dust bunny that torched from proximity to the CPU cooling fins.

[NiX]

After some extensive research I found out the mobo fans on these line of boards are really bad and tend to, over time, just start making noise. No real explanation for why. I just took a screw driver and bent the casing so it would stop grinding the fan. The smell was probably from dust burning up because I was moving the computer around so much. Vacuumed and all is well now. Thanks for the advice!

[Rasix]

Looks like I'm getting the 8800GT for Christmas.  Any recommendations for a cheap/reliable power supply?  I'm thinking 500w should be sufficient and NewEgg seems to always have a few on sale/rebate (yes, I mail them in).

I've heard though that some folks have used the PSU I have to run a 8800GT successfully.  Is there any possibility of damaging the card by running it on a PSU that can't handle it?

[Hoax]

I would toss Corsair's 550W offering into the ring after doing a tiny bit of research myself, but I'm looking forward to other people's thoughts.

[schild]

That's the powersupply I have. It's actually a Seasonic and it's fucking awesome. And quiet as hell. X360 is about 4 times louder.

[Rasix]

I'd prefer ehh, the cheap.  I'm not looking for premium here.  This card will likely never be SLI'd in this case by whatever PSU I choose now.  I'm not concerned about noise either.  I can live with noise, my primary console is a 360.

[schild]

What does SLI have to do with it?

Don't you have an older processor from thsi generation? Doesn't it suck more power?

Totally a "get what you pay for" situation too. A shitty power supply can SHORTEN the length of a computer.

[Rasix]

How is power consumption going to matter when the $120 PSU at the same wattage as the $50 PSU?  I don't care about noise, SLI capability (some PSUs even at this low wattage say shit about SLI, I don't care), or how nifty it looks.   Paging Dr. Trippy.

And that Corsair isn't bad.  Some of these I'm looking at seem a little extreme.

Edit: Crap, the Antec I was looking at earlier isn't $50 bucks off anymore. 

[Trippy]

If you care about your electric bills efficiency matters and the more expensive power supplies are often more efficient than their cheaper brethren. There's a new "80 Plus" certification standard for power supplies that you can look for if you care about such things though there are older models that don't have the certification but would qualify for it so you have to read the fine print.

I don't buy low end power supplies so I can't really recommend anything in the $50 range. Something like this might be a reasonable compromise at $70:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151040

though it's not much cheaper than that Corsair with that rebate.

It's very unlikely you'll damage the video card or the rest of your computer if your power supply can't provide enough power. Typically either the application will crash or your machine will reboot if the power demands are too great. What I do is run one of the looping 3Dmark demos or the FF XI benchmark overnight and if it's still running when I wake up I'm pretty confident my power supply is putting out sufficient power.

[Murgos]

A good power supply can be 90% efficient or higher.  A poor one may be below 75%.

I.e. 100 W of wall current at 75% efficiency creates 75 W of DC power for the computer.   That other 25 W is dissipated as waste heat.  We all know that heat + electronics = bad.  A 500 W PSU that's only 68% efficient will waste an extra 100 W over a 500W PSU that's 88% efficient.  If you leave your computer on all the time that could easily be 5 - 10 bucks a month on your electric bill.  Over a year an efficient PSU may have paid for itself.

Different PSU's will have their maximum efficiency at different loads so that is something to consider as well.

Also, If the PSU sucks and, for example, is driving your 3.3V line at anywhere from 3.0 - 3.6 V depending on what time of day/how hot it is or, even just fluctuating rapidly between 3.29 - 3.31 V you can put a lot more stress on your system wearing down the life of everything else.

[Rasix]

Excellent, thanks.  Detailed information ftw.

Yah, looks like anything decent runs $65 plus.  Some of the cheaper stuff tend to have a lot of lower customer reviews or have subpar amps on the 12v rails.  Heh, I know she got the card on sale.   

[Miasma]

Power supplies are like shoes, you can't pay too much.