Bad power supply?

[timmay586]

I recently built my first computer. It worked fine at first but now both my motherboard and video card have gradually gone bad. First my motherboard (MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum) started to BSOD when I had 1GB of RAM and I used 512 and it worked fine if I upped voltages. Slowly the voltage required for stability increased, and now it won't run stably at all. Now the integrated LAN won't work (I randomly lose connection if I get too many packets or something, World of Warcraft and CS: Source make me lose my net connection for a few minutes). The video card problem (eVGA GF 6800 Ultra) is that on random web sites, especially anandtech forums, it will go totally black for a fraction of a second and then come back to normal, sometimes with AA randomly enabled. This problem seems to be triggered by specific colors and it always happens on the same web pages. The same thing happens when I change the brightness. One of the DVI ports on the video card also stopped working. I have all the newest drivers but I reinstalled all the old ones and the problems are still there. I have an Antec 480W TrueBlue power supply which should be enough but the problems still happen when i disconnect all nonessential drives. The parts are ruined but since they both seemed fine at first, I want to know if the power supply is reason they went bad. Is there any way to test this?

 

[FlyingPenguin]

PSU would be a prime suspect. Could be the voltages aren't stable. The Antec is an excellent unit, and I highly recommend it, but it's possible the PSU took a hit from a power surge which damaged it. It happens.

You could connect a digital multimeter to the 5 and 12 volt lines on a spare hard drive connector and see if the voltages are withing 5% +/-. However be aware that the voltage might only flucuate at certain times or under certain loads. It could also be another voltage bus that's having problems, although the 5 and 12 volt rails are the most important ones.

I would definately consider swapping out the PSU and seeing if that helps, HOWEVER it's possible the mobo is also damaged (maybe bad capacitors from the initial surge) and it may not solve your stability problems.

 

[LiLithTecH]

That motherboard allows for quite a bit of tweaking.

Were you OverClocking or did you just settle on default speeds?

 

[timmay586]

I did not overclock.

I don't have a spare PSU, so what would you suggest I do? Do you think Newegg would just let me return it for a new one even though I don't know for sure that there's anything wrong with it?

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Newegg will let let you RMA it if it's still under warranty. Easy to do - you just log into your account online. Don't even need to talk to anyone.

It would probably be prudent to do so - I highly suspect you PSU is the problem. Problem is you mobo maybe damaged as well, or even be the cause. Hard to say.

Your best option may be to take it to a small Mom & Pop computer store in town (NOT a large retail store!) and have them look at it and test all the components for a reasonable price.