February 10, 2013

• Surgical Saturday (Or How to Kill a Weekend)

  I woke up Saturday feeling pretty good and like ritual, went to check my email.

  I press the button to fire up my computer, and nothing happens. Everything was fine the night before when I shut it down. My initial thought was a electric outage, but I look at the equipment and the monitor lights and their power LED’s are all lit.

  After a couple more non responsive button presses. I can only conclude that power supply has failed. Oh happy day.

  For those new to my saga, I have had what I consider a ABNORMAL amount of power supply failures over the last few years – here’s the history: Link to the past.

  During that time, I suspected the nice “bling-bling” LED power supply was suspect, but didn’t have concrete proof. I gave it the benefit of the doubt since I put it in my main computer which has much more equipment and draws more power so I though the power supply amount wasn’t big enough to handle the load.

  Then I built my new trading computer and used a similar “bling-bling” power supply from the same company I had purchased a few years back. The trading computer is streamline build with minimal equipment that has just a fraction of the energy requirements as my main system, so I thought I would be good. This Saturday proved me wrong.

  Failed power supplies are a big hassle since it requires you to unplug the system, take apart the case, and detach all the power connectors before you can swap out the power supply. Of course before that you have to go buy a new power supply. This isn’t something I can put off since I need the computer for trading so it takes immediate priority over the days tasks.

  Unfortunately, my main computer is also offline due to a bad hard drive that I’m troubleshooting, but fortunately I still had my laptop to access the net and shop around the area for a new power supply.

  After a nice long drive and dealing with obnoxious store crowds that appear to be aimlessly wandering around I find the power supply section. Then I get accosted by a store clerk who attempts to “help” and sell me a product I’m not interested in while I politely decline. I should have said, “Don’t worry, I’m an engineer- I know what I’m doing.”

  Anyways, I get a suitable replacement, make it back home and I’m already kinda tired, but I know this is when the “real fun” begins….

  Caution: Not for the squeamish….

   

  Surgery Begins:

  

  Besides the power supply being burnt out, the front turbine fan had some spin issues and a mini fan in the back developed a noisy whining sound so it was a good time to make those minor replacements as well.

   

  

   

  Computers can be quite the dust magnets. Once the case is opened, you can see all the dust/dirt that collects on the fan blades, even if you’re using fan filters. So you have to spend a good portion of time cleaning that up.

   

  Here’s the offending power supply:

   

  

   

  Nicely chrome polished outside, “cool” looking inside with blue glow, but apparently a “non-cool” short life span.

  The first unit in my main system failed in 19 months. This unit lasted a bit longer at 23 months.

  Lesson learned: “Bling-bling” is nice – but go with brand name quality/reliability unless you miss engineering and like computer building so much that you want to revisit those skills around every 1.75 years or so.

   

  Side view:

  

   

  Oh so sexy, but oh so sinful!

  That makes for an exciting mate, but not so much fun when it comes to power supplies.

   

  The surgery was a success and the system is back up and running, ready to trade another day.  

  I only wish the prospects of completing all my original weekend plans were just as optimistic….

   

   

  • 5:33 pm
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