So, this is actually my second Ultra. I participated in one of those $20 AR deals well over one year ago, and received a 500W X-Connect power supply. I liked the modularity of the device, and was pretty pleased for about 4 months until it completely died. None of the fans or LEDs would even turn on. I tried to short the power supply directly, but still no dice.
No problem. I'm used to hardware failing, so I sent it back. I ended up installing the new one without issue and it has been trouble free for 8 months...until today. Click-click-click goes one of my raptors. At first, I thought it was going bad since I'm VERY used to hard drives failing (that's a whole different conversation -- let's just say that I'm a IBM DeathStar victim). I tried rebooting, and then Windows said a whole bunch of file segments were unreadable and it wouldn't boot. Great...
But then I remembered how long I've had these drives and how reliable raptors are supposed to be. And at that point, I heard TWO of my raptors do the clicks at the same time...and then I knew it had to be my power supply. Turns out, that stupid little UV light inside of the power supply was noticeably dim at the time while my hard drives were busy shitting themselves. So, I turn off my PC, unhook all of my fans, my other 40GB IDE hard drive, and my CD drive...then boot up again. Windows loads fine and I ran a defrag on one a rather fragmented partition. It completed without any hesitation and my raptors have that nice... "growl" like they always do. Oh, and curiously enough, that stupid little UV light is at it's full brightness again. My system has been up now for several hours since, and my raptors have yet to hiccup.
Now, that being said, I am sick of these damn X-Connect PSUs. I don't even want to attempt to have it repaired or RMA'ed or whatever. Also, I don't care if it's modular or not. I just want to purchase something reliable.
Here's everything that I need to have powered:
Athlon 64 3500+
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
3 WD Raptors
1 40GB Drive
1 CD Drive
3 Fans
That's all I need. I don't plan on ever changing my video card since I don't play games, so don't worry about accommodating for future upgrades. I'm a poor college student, so I'd prefer something reasonable in price (no more than $75ish shipped).
Also, when I do get this power supply, I'm getting rid of my RAID0 array and will instead divide things up accordingly on my 3 raptors (OS, Apps, Misc). I've finally reached the point where I don't give a shit about increased synthetic file benchmarks, and I'd rather have less of a chance of losing all of my data.
Thanks for your help!
No problem. I'm used to hardware failing, so I sent it back. I ended up installing the new one without issue and it has been trouble free for 8 months...until today. Click-click-click goes one of my raptors. At first, I thought it was going bad since I'm VERY used to hard drives failing (that's a whole different conversation -- let's just say that I'm a IBM DeathStar victim). I tried rebooting, and then Windows said a whole bunch of file segments were unreadable and it wouldn't boot. Great...
But then I remembered how long I've had these drives and how reliable raptors are supposed to be. And at that point, I heard TWO of my raptors do the clicks at the same time...and then I knew it had to be my power supply. Turns out, that stupid little UV light inside of the power supply was noticeably dim at the time while my hard drives were busy shitting themselves. So, I turn off my PC, unhook all of my fans, my other 40GB IDE hard drive, and my CD drive...then boot up again. Windows loads fine and I ran a defrag on one a rather fragmented partition. It completed without any hesitation and my raptors have that nice... "growl" like they always do. Oh, and curiously enough, that stupid little UV light is at it's full brightness again. My system has been up now for several hours since, and my raptors have yet to hiccup.
Now, that being said, I am sick of these damn X-Connect PSUs. I don't even want to attempt to have it repaired or RMA'ed or whatever. Also, I don't care if it's modular or not. I just want to purchase something reliable.
Here's everything that I need to have powered:
Athlon 64 3500+
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
3 WD Raptors
1 40GB Drive
1 CD Drive
3 Fans
That's all I need. I don't plan on ever changing my video card since I don't play games, so don't worry about accommodating for future upgrades. I'm a poor college student, so I'd prefer something reasonable in price (no more than $75ish shipped).
Also, when I do get this power supply, I'm getting rid of my RAID0 array and will instead divide things up accordingly on my 3 raptors (OS, Apps, Misc). I've finally reached the point where I don't give a shit about increased synthetic file benchmarks, and I'd rather have less of a chance of losing all of my data.
Thanks for your help!