Category: Computer bits

Ordered a new computer power supply after we got back from Rome to replace the old one that flaked out. Went with a 750W EVGA SuperNOVA G2 supply from Newegg based on favourable comments at The Tech Report and jonnyGURU.

The power supply came in a nice sturdy box, and was securely packed inside.

All the cables that can plug into the power supply along with some cable ties, screws and a testing plug that lets you test the power supply without having to plug it into a computer.

It’s a pretty slick looking power supply that comes in a nice black finish.

The modular connectors are all labeled so it’s easy to figure out what cables go where.

Plenty of ventilation holes out the back for the fan to push hot air through. The ECO ON/OFF switch toggles a power saving mode that turns on the fan only when the power supply needs additional cooling. The fan is pretty quiet and I can’t hear it over the noise of the other fans in the system.

After about 30 minutes of routing and re-routing the cables, I got the power supply installed. Installation was pretty easy. The cables are all labeled, so there’s no guess work about what cables are used where.

Turned the power on and everything came up without any smoke appearing. The cable routing is pretty messy right now. At some point if I get motivated enough, I may tear everything apart and re-route everything to make it look nicer (the insides need a good cleaning anyway). For now, everything works and I’m happy to have an operational system again.

Popped the cover off the old power supply from the computer to have a look at the innards. I had blown a lot of the dust out of it earlier, but there was still a bit clumped around the wires that come out the back.

It’s pretty densely packed in there. At first glance, all the components on the board still look in pretty good condition. Since the main culprit for why the power supply went flaky was the main power switch, I looked there first.

Replacing the switch would have been a pretty simple fix to resurrect this power supply, but a closer look shows a good bit of corrosion at the one terminal and the wire soldered to it.

It will still probably be a fairly easy fix, but I’ll have to replace the one corroded wire along with the switch. The other end of the wire isn’t going to be that easy to get to to remove and replace. I’ll probably leave this for a project to work on after moving into the new house.

After nearly 6 years, it seems the power supply in my computer has decided to go flaky.

The problem started about a week ago when the computer abruptly shut down on me. After a few seconds it powered back up, and didn’t happen again for a while. Then the sudden shutdowns started to become more frequent. Sometimes the computer would stay running overnight, other times it would shut down 3 or 4 times in rapid succession. It would stay running for a few hours, then boom. Other times it would be up for a few minutes, then boom. Frequent but intermittent.

Primary suspect was the power supply. I reseated all the cables going from the power supply to the motherboard and wiped the BIOS, but that didn’t help things. Then I noticed the main power switch on the power supply was broken and didn’t toggle on/off anymore. Seems like a good candidate to cause such problems.

While the power supply was the main suspect, I wasn’t able to rule out other problems too like something bad on the motherboard. Fortunately someone in the Charleston Tech Slack (if you’re looking for geeky tech-y people to connect with, sign up here) had a couple of 650W power supplies he was willing to let me borrow. They’re smaller than the 800W supply currently in the computer, but 650W is enough to run things.

Disconnected the old power supply from everything and connected the loaner. Since the power supply is just a loaner, I didn’t bother with putting it in the case.

Computer’s been up and running on the loaner power supply for a few hours now with no issues so far. Compared to what the computer had been doing before, that’s a significant improvement and a good sign that something in the power supply is faulty. I’ll keep it going for a couple more days to see how things go, and if everything’s ok I’ll order a new power supply to replace the original one.

A while back, I took the plunge and rooted my Transformer Prime tablet. Found an Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) ROM to install and installed it along with a new recovery ROM. Worked pretty well and made the tablet fun to use again.

The Galaxy S2 got the Cyanogenmod treatment with CM11, but for the past few months, ROM updates have been relatively infrequent, and there were no signs of Android 5 (Lollipop) ever making it to the S2.

With Android 6 (Marshmallow) being pushed out to phones, I decided it was time to bring the tablet and S2 a little further into the future. The XDA Developers forums is a good place to find builds of new ROMS for all kinds of devices. The Transformer Prime got the KatKiss 5.1.1 ROM along with a fresh TWRP recovery ROM while the S2 got the Candy5 5.1.1 ROM as well as the TWRP recovery.

The ROM install on the S2 was pretty painless, and seems to be running pretty well so far. Thought the S2 might have some issues running Lollipop, but so far so good.