Is my PSU broken?

[isaac12345]

Hi all,

For the past few months, I have been having problems with my motherboard. After getting it repaired twice, I suspect that maybe the power supply is bad and is damaging the motherboard over time. I opened it up today and found that one of the ferrite coils felt looser to the touch than the one next to it. I took a few photos(http://imgur.com/a/pTBXs) and saw what looked like a broken connection to the PCB(photos 3 and 4). But I cant see any metallic connectors just yellow plastic. Is this a possible electrical connection that has broken off or a plastic connection that I shouldn't worry about? Any informed suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[paul878]

Those ferrite coils are solder to the pcb by the wires that make up the coil.
So feeling lose don't mean nothing. To test the power supply get a multi-meter and measure the voltage output under load.

What was the problem with your motherboard and how was it repaired?

 

[isaac12345]

Well the computer kept restarting randomly under loads varying from simple browsing to cpu heavy emulation. When the problem occurred it used to simply restart back to the OS, but slowly over time it degraded to the point where the system wouldn't even show anything on the display.

The repair guy repaired the board twice. The first time he didn't tell me what he repaired. The second time he said it was the BIOS chip that was repaired. But I dont believe him because of how he was behaving the first time as well as how this time he was saying that he had a hard time finding a BIOS chip, which I would think are very common, and was encouraging me to simply upgrade to a newer board. When he gave me the desktop back after repairing it for the second time, the same problem started occuring a just day or two after!

So this time I changed the repair guy and he told me that the southbridge chip is faulty and needs replacement. But because its an old board its not readily available which sounds more believable.

Furthermore, thinking it was a problem with the electrics in my house, I shifted the desktop to another house and ran prime 95 tests. All the blend tests successfully ran for more than 12 hours except for the full power consumption test which made the system restart on its own. So now I suspect that it might be the power supply that's not working properly and damaging the motherboard overtime. I did check the voltages with HWMonitor while running on stock clocks and auto voltage setting (http://i.imgur.com/hBVx3MA.jpg). They seemed to be within specs. I just dont remember whether it was running prime95 or not when I took the screenshot.

Hope this answers your question sufficiently.

 

[paul878]

Assuming that HWMonitor is accurate your 3.3v rail is out of specs, it should be +-5%. I doubt the guy did any repair on your motherboard, it is impractical to do component level repair, and almost all shop can't do component level repair. I would suggest you run the computer 1 stick or ram and 1 hdd connected and stress test. It would be best if you can swap out the power supply and test.

 

[isaac12345]

Assuming that HWMonitor is accurate your 3.3v rail is out of specs, it should be +-5%. I doubt the guy did any repair on your motherboard, it is impractical to do component level repair, and almost all shop can't do component level repair. I would suggest you run the computer 1 stick or ram and 1 hdd connected and stress test. It would be best if you can swap out the power supply and test.

-5% would be 3.135v. The range being displayed is 3.168v to 3.184v. That seems to be within specs but is it too close for practical purposes?

 

[C1]

You should be able to monitor/real time display MB applied voltages from the "power options" section in the BIOS. (At least I can via my ASUS board.)

Just 'cause components on the MB fail doesnt necessarily mean that the MB is bad. A MB can be damaged from having a defective component connected to it (eg, PCIe card).

The whole system needs to be replaced or probably pulled down for testing in a minimal configuration, then add components back piecemeal.

If there are PSU doubts, just buy one from Frys. If that isnt a fix, then either return the PSU, keep it as back up or use it as the initial first component of a new system.

 

[FX2000]

If it restarts randomly, it may aswell by the CPU VRM on the motherboard gone to shit, or the RAM. Bust out the multimeter.