My PSU & HDD Story from Hell

This is a long story, but I'll try to include just the important parts.

Couple weeks ago my Ultra X-Connect 500 watt power supply starts to die. How do I know? 5 seconds after I would boot it would turn off, sometimes it would boot and all would be fine and it would randomly turn off. It would turn off and could not turn it back on, tried to turn it back on in a couple minutes and it worked. Back when I bought the psu I remember I had registered it to take advantage of the lifetime warranty, so I call Ultra and they tell me I registered it after the 30 days, but honored it anyway. They advance ship me a new psu same model and wattage.

Meanwhile, while I wait for the new psu I use a spare Antec 500 watt, throw it in and everything works. Before I swap them out I make sure to backup some things to my external drive just incase something goes wrong. So a week later the new Ultra psu comes and I don't think to backup since I thought it would be fine. Put it in and connect everything and come to find out my raid 0 array is not being detected on my 2x 160 GB Hitachi Deskstars. After determining they are not spinning up I put the old Antec psu back and find that this does nothing. The drives are dead. I try the other raid controller (Silicon controller) on my MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum....nothing.

A friend suggests that the logic boards on the hard drives are dead and he has had success in swapping them out. So I go on eBay and find someone who has the exact same drives, model, and even manufacturer date. I order 1 for $70 just to see if it will work and if it works I'll order another. It comes, I switch logic boards, and it does nothing. I put everything back together and just for kicks plug all of them in and one of my old drives that was earlier not spinning starts to spin up and starts clicking while the other is still dead. Scap that idea I just lost ~200 GB of data and only have a week old backup of certain important things like My Docs etc.

Wanting to start fresh I order a 250 GB Western Digital drive off newegg on the 18th (yesterday) and it arrives today (Dec 19th). I connect everything and continue to use the new Ultra 500 watt PSU from the RMA. Pop in my Windows disk with my NV Raid floppy disk in hand, press F6, load the Sata Raid drivers (even though I am not doing Raid anymore) and Windows cannot find any hard drives. Try the Silicon Sata Raid controller with the driver floppy and that’s a no go also. Head to the msi website and download the latest Silicon and NV Raid drivers, put them on a floppy try again, which does not work either. I take the drive out which I notice is very hot and it does seem to be spinning.

I plug the new drive into an older Abit motherboard via Sata of course and the Sata Raid controller does not pick up the drive. I even try to install Windows along with the Abit Sata Raid drivers from the floppy and again Windows does not detect the drive and this is on a completely different setup.

At this point I think the supposed new Ultra psu they sent me is frying every hard drive I connect to it. I tried connecting it again and the hard drive never gets as warm as it did when I first connected it. I tried swapping Sata cables and nothing has worked. I called Ultra right after I received the new power supply telling them about this and they said to get a volt meter to see if it’s putting out the right amount of voltage. I don't really want to mess with that since I would probably electrocute myself.

Anyway anything thoughts on this? Sorry for the long winded story.

Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
CPU: Amd x2 3800+ (no overclock)
Ram: 2 GB OCZ

You can measure your powersupply safely with a powersupply tester. If it beeps upon turning on the tester, you have a bad power supply. If you feel your powersupply is unsafe unplug it quickly and send it back.

Good idea. I might run out to frys tomorrow and get something like this

I can tell you right now that the Ultra X-Connect will kill your components. I have had two, and both were absolute junk, and the replacements that were sent to me went promptly on eBay. Both blew capacitors, smoked up the entire room, and took out hard drives, motherboards, and video cards. They were neat when they first came out, but they are just bad PSUs. Silverstone/Corsair/Seasonic FTW.

An Antec PSU tester will work just fine. I think Thermaltake makes one too. If it tests bad, send it back for another replacement and when they send you the third unit, put it on eBay and get something that won't destroy your remaining components. Too many people skimp on PSUs. I'm not saying that's what you did, because the X-Connect was expensive back in the day, but all the glowing modular blah-blah took a front seat, and quality flew out the window.

Sorry about your drives dude.

Wow, that is pretty bad if it can wreck a whole system like that. I am interested to see what the tester has to say, but after hearing that I don't want anything to do with Ultra.

When the X-connect first came out I think it was one of the first that was modular, which was a reason I bought it. I know now there are many others that are modular as well.

The early model X-Connects were notorious for dying. Youngyear = crappy OEM.

Ultra has since cleaned up their act.

The original psu I had was one of the early ones. The new one they sent me I am not sure when it was made but it was noticeably different from other like an updated model.