Crashing the System

It started like this. The old power supply in the system died some years ago. I replaced it with a HEC 550W supply which was considered to be reliable. (Wilson said so.) The ASUS P4B533 motherboard was also finally giving after seven years of abuse with two dead PCI slots. That led to intermittant voltage problems. Concurrently, the 'new' HEC supply was dying too, given that I have too many devices onboard, three HDD, one DVD writer, two or three PCI cards, video card requiring extra power and three or four fans.

There was also power leakage. The problems compounded and thus, it led to a chain of failures. Cascading failures. Something had to give.

Eventually, the power and heat issues led to a HDD failure. I lost photos and artwork. Oh well. Yes, I backed up everyone else's data except my own. Tragic.

A good power supply is very important. All the big branded computers out there generally use generic power supplies with a life span of 3-5 years, generally less. Three is the norm. Beware.