Bad PSU?

[krillin6]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone can tell me if what I am seeing is a bad PSU, or just a bad board. I have a Thermaltake 650w that might have fried my northbridge on my board. When I attempt to power on my machine with the PSU, I hear a light buzzing sound for roughly 1/4 of a second, and I can smell a fresh burned IC smell coming from the northbridge area. If I connect another PSU (600w Thermaltake) I don't get the noise and don't smell fresh burn every time I attempt to power on. Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Extra Info and Notes: I ran the motherboard on this PSU for a little over a month before it completely stopped working, but always had unstable mild overclocks (3.8 or 4.0GHz), bluescreens (only had to run prime95 a few seconds usually), and reported voltages on almost every component were always about 50mV or so under where they were set. When my i5-2550K was set to 1.3V, it showed in BIOS and CPU-Z as ~1.25V while under load or not, etc. 3.3V and 5V rails were similar, whether under heavy CPU load or not.

I ran a Core 2 Q6600 and a Gigabyte board on this power supply for a few months or more and never had an issue, which is the thing that makes me hesitate and ask the questions about it.

Board: EVGA Z68 SLI - toast, won't power on
PSU: Thermaltake 650w - not sure of the exact part number at the moment
Memory: 16GB (4x4GB) GeIL 9-9-9-28
CPU: 2nd Gen Core i5-2550K

 

[Tsumi]

Thermaltake has varying qualities, from absolute crap, avoid at all costs, to some of the better ones on the market.

Although, based on your testing, if one works and the other doesn't, most likely that one is bad. A way to tell is to use a DMM (digital multimeter) and check the voltages.

 

[krillin6]

Tsumi,

Actually, since the board is toast, both power supplies won't power the board for more than a couple milliseconds; no POST, only a couple of LEDs light up. Sorry, I probably wasn't clear enough in my original post.

The only difference I'm seeing between two PSUs is in the noise and smell. I am thinking I might have one of the awful thermaltake designs, simply due to the apparent under voltage. I'll have to look up reviews once I get home and have the model number. I just wish I could get into the BIOS to compare the two PSU voltages on the same board, but now I'll have to wait for the new board to test that way, and also hope the new board doesn't get burned up in the process.

 

[Tsumi]

Bios and software reading of voltages usually cannot be trusted. There is the off chance that it would match up, but the only sure way to tell is to use a DMM.

 

[krillin6]

Tsumi,

Thanks for the info. It definitely can be tough to trust numbers sometimes. As a follow up, I read the reviews from newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153116

And someone else mentioned he thinks this PSU toasted his board; also, a lot of people complained about bad construction (power switch falls off) and odd things like the powersupply just shutting off and not restarting like it should (come to think of it, mine did that too a few times; I just thought it was because of the board or my overclock) and stability issues even at unoverclocked settings. I am going to ask for an RMA, but I'll try and have them just put the value to a powersupply that doesn't suck. I doubt they'll accommodate, but I don't want this PSU any longer

Only buy Thermaltake Toughpower PSUs, if you have $400 laying around... They review well, but hot damn are they expensive.

 

[Jorona]

Or, ya know, just don't buy Thermaltake PSUs period. Their price to performance is just bad. Get a nice Seasonic, Kingwin, Corsair, or XFX.

 

[E4g1e]

Tsumi,

Thanks for the info. It definitely can be tough to trust numbers sometimes. As a follow up, I read the reviews from newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153116

And someone else mentioned he thinks this PSU toasted his board; also, a lot of people complained about bad construction (power switch falls off) and odd things like the powersupply just shutting off and not restarting like it should (come to think of it, mine did that too a few times; I just thought it was because of the board or my overclock) and stability issues even at unoverclocked settings. I am going to ask for an RMA, but I'll try and have them just put the value to a powersupply that doesn't suck. I doubt they'll accommodate, but I don't want this PSU any longer

Only buy Thermaltake Toughpower PSUs, if you have $400 laying around... They review well, but hot damn are they expensive.

Actually, there are good 620 to 650W PSUs that sell in the $85 to $90 range. That Thermaltake TR2 RX 650W, alas, isn't one of those. In fact, it is one of many PSUs in that price range that actually suck.