Mikeserv Support Forum

I had a video playing on my kitchen computer last week when it abruptly died and wouldn't power back up. With the frequent power surges here during the summer months that may have been the culprit, and it just took a while to finally kill it. So I replaced it with one of my mini computers and set this one aside for when I had time to sort it out. I tore into it today, first I tried powering it on again, and it was pulling no power on my watt meter. So I hooked up another power supply, and it powered right up and posted. So, it needs a new power supply. It's a small form factor ITX case and needs a small form factor power supply, and I don't think I have another one of those, just full size ATX units. These tiny machines are a pain to work on, I had pull stuff out just to have enough room to pull out the power connectors.

After the power supply-ectomy:

It's an FSP Group PS, those have usually been pretty good.


I plan to have solar batteries and a whole house surge protector before next summer

Heheh, that's why I never do miniature things. I generally wouldn't work on those, if I couldn't get at the components easily. Some weren't too bad, like those Acer small form factor computers in previous decades but that looks horrible

I haven't had a PSU failure since I started buying expensive ones, but I've got the opposite problem here in the summer time. With all the oxygen thieves, there's a lot more drain on the grid so they rip us off by cutting the voltage. It's often 104'ish or worse around supper time, going back up around 120 late at night. If it drops below 100, there's trouble (with a lot of things in this house). The UPS's would go into AVR mode below 100.

Solar is the best thing, it's YOURS. The sooner you can get that working for you the better.

So I fixed it I replaced it with a modular power supply, thinking it would be less of a struggle getting it in there, but if anything I'd say it was worse. I ended up removing the drive cage to make more room for the cables. This is the first Lian Li hardware I've ever had, I remember IA used to favor their cases 20 years ago.

Ah well, that fitted up pretty good. I can see how a modular one might be more difficult in that little sardine can, because you have more connectors in the way etc.