Bitcoin Forum

What is the first sign of modern PSU's going down?


Few days ago my computer woke me up making loud noises, they were coming out of PSU,  computer was idling really, I shut it down and then few hours later was very worried turning it up again to see what will happen. but it seams to be working okay for now, although I must admit I'm afraid of turning miners on after this incident.

I know my PSU is not too good for dual overclocked 5830s, I had done few weeks experimenting before finding stable OC settings, but now think OC'ing took a toll on PSU (didn't not mess with voltages).   I have Coolermaster 600W silent pro which only delivers 480W on 12V line and I figure my GPUs were sucking up most of it for a month or so at 896/360. 

Amazed it didn't kill my computer yet after that nasty sound. But I guess I should wait for new PSU before starting up mining again.  What do you think?



PS Now that I tried to change OC settings back to 896/360, one of GPUs refuses to accept anything but default 800/1000 (I know I should try rebooting at this point)

What kind of noise was it?
The reason I ask is that I remember an old PSU of mine making a very nasty high pitched squealing noise for ~2 days before it literally blew up in smoke and deformed its case.

I couldn't tell exactly, it wasn't high pitch one, but was loud cranking type of noise as if either something was in a way of fans which wasn't the case, or transformer/capacitor was going to blow up but not too electric discharge sounding.   I expected noise to continue when I turned it up again, but it runs normally now like it did before. No insect can get in there, and I don't have many of those in my house except occasional fly get inside of house with back door opening.

Now that I think about sometimes I hear very very quiet high pitch sound but I was thinking it was one of the fans

did you check for dust and other gunk in the power supply and fan?

it's clean, I do regular air-blowing maintenance to my computer

An old model Antec PSU was well known for that. I think it is the cap's starting to leak that causes the noise. I had one of those old Antec's in my case making that noise and I quickly replaced it before it failed but I had a friend that wasn't so lucky.

Buy quality PSU's people...

High pitched screeching-like sounds are usually capacitors attempting to commit suicide. I'm not sure how well you can look inside your PSU, but if you see the capacitors bulging at the top, then they're getting close to giving out.

i think thats just coil whine

in my experience, the first sign is the smell of plastic burning.  Then about 15 min - 1 hour later it goes BANG! there is a flash of electrical flame, and it never works again, you have to rma.

PSU is running fine for a week without high load, don't have guts yet to try miners on although I might give it a try without OC settings
Only other thing that could have happened is if small tiny spider got in there, but I can't see how it could make so much clunking noise that it was making that woke me up, I would think it would just burn instantaneously and that would be it for a little fella.