Sign of a poor quality PSU?

[Benny Blanco]

I picked up a coolmax 400w PSU from newegg for $41. It is all black, has a 120mm fan, 1 serial-ATA plug, and a fan controller switch. Most importantly, it has decent power on the 12v rail (18A).

I have been completely pleased and impressed with this thing. It runs very cool, and very quiet, but I notice that when I plug in the power cable, the fans jump and the LED blinks on the fans that have LED's. I have never had this happen on any other power supply, but I have seen it happen on a friend's pc, which I assumed it was a crappy PSU (it came with his crap alien case).

I have a power strip that I turn off every night, so every morning when I turn it on, the power surge runs as usual. Should I be concerned about this? I am thinking I will sell it to someone that I'm going to build a pc for soon, and be done with it.

Thanks
Benny

[ehZn]

Never happened to me, and I've never heard of that brand, but maybe it's not a great idea to be turning the power strip or psu on and off a lot? Turning the comp off is enough, but keep turning the rest of it off and on and you might cause yourself problems.

I'm no expert, just an opinion.

[SJetski71]

Coolmax psu's are rebadged TTGI's, which does/has manufacture enermax power supplies. Not a generic psu at all in other words.

Maybe something flaky with the built-in fan controller switch? Or maybe its a by-product of your particular power setup. On another note i've seen many a cruddy power strip, name brands and everything, they spark, catch fire, and other bizarre behavior. Try to borrow one from somebody before you go out and purchase another. Is the juice coming out of your wall socket ok? How good is the wiring in your home? Try plugging your rig into 1 or 2 other sockets in your home (made a huge difference for some [H] members)

Before i go off on a tangent i think you get my meaning: Try a process of elimination before you spend big bucks on anything.

[Benny Blanco]

ehZn, I turn off the main power strip any time the PC is off. It's one of those monitor stands/surge protector things, with 5 individual controls plus a main control. It's VERy handy for resetting the dsl modem or when I want to reset the bios cmos.

If anyone knows for certain that this is a bad practice, please tell me!

SJetski, I'm glad to know it's not a generic PSU. It really does seem like a high quality PSU in every other way.

As far as process of eliminating everything else, I've used fortron, enermax, and several generic PSU's on this same outlet and surge protector, and other outlets & surge protectors in this home, so I am pretty positive that it is not a by product of anything outside the PSU itself.

If I was a person that had the PC plugged in and running 24/7, I'd definitely keep it, but alas, I am not.

[M1ster_R0gers]

Those are your capacitors getting charged. I consider it pretty common. Can you change your bios settings for power up after loss of power? On some boards you get a yes/no/last state setting. Try setting it to no and see if that helps.

On many of my boards the network light stays lit with the machine powered down, it helps to remind me that even with the comp shut down there is still power being sent through the mobo.

If it were me I would not be concerned at all, but if you want to make sure its your motherboard try the obvious of hooking up another PSU and see if you get similar results.

[gee]

The capacitors on the input of an ATX power supply will charge whenever you turn on the switch on the back if there is a switch, or otherwise they'll turn on whenever you plug the supply in or flick the switch on your power bar. It doesn't matter if the supply is actually "turned on" by the computer - BIOS settings won't make any kind of difference to this.

And this does cause quite a large inrush current; it's expected. Personally I'd just leave the power supply plugged in all the time.

[Ice Czar]

as gee points out the mobo is powered whether the computer is turned on or not
and is how a mobo with Wake on LAN is able to perform that step ;)