Unfortunately you can’t just go by that alone anymore. There are underhanded ways for manufacturers to get their sub-par power supplies to pass an 80+ Gold test. Others do shady shit like name their PSUs stuff like “85 Plus” or “90 Plus”; there is no such certification or standard other than 80.
The companies you named above do not play these kinds of games. Seasonic doesn’t make anything else, and all of their products are certified 80+ legit. In fact they are the OEM for a lot of other PSU brands that just slap their name on them. Usually costs a little more than other brands, but IMO it’s worth it.
I have a 5 month old HP gaming computer (a desktop) currently with HP because it shut down normally 3 weeks ago and it hasn’t started since. Whatever part it needs replaced is on back-order and they don’t expect to get the computer back to me until the second week of December. sigh
I use a well-worn Microsoft Surface tablet. Where the power cable plugs into the tablet has been a bit flaky of late. Tonight the head of the cable had magic smoke coming out.
It seems that this week is a bad one for Doper power supplies. I have a spare power cable, but I sure hope the problem is not also in the internal connector in the tablet itself. The good news is all my data is cloud synced. The bad news is it’s still a PITA to have to move into a new machine if this one is doomed.
That’d be nice. But you’re not going to get that on highly miniaturized gizmos that undergo revolutionary change and improvement every couple of years. Even replacing the battery of a mobile phone or a tablet is major surgery.
The pace of hardware progress has certainly slowed down since e.g. 2003 or even 2013. But it’s still the case the price vs performance or capacity of today’s new-build stuff puts even 3yo stuff to shame. Which makes including upgradability as a design goal largely pointless. Ship of Theseus PCs are possible for a few years, but not for long. Back around the turn of the century my IT firm had some rack-mount servers with hot-swappable RAIDed disks and hot swappable dual power supplies. My phone now has orders of magnitude more RAM, storage, CPU cores, and total processing throughput than those hot noisy behemoths.
Turns out I was lucky this time and it was just the power cord that was defective and I had a second one for traveling. The bad news is it’s a one-piece unit from male wall plug to converter brick to non-standard male connector that sticks into the tablet. I see the genuine Microsoft ones sell new for ~US$80 while Chinese knockoffs sell for ~$25. Of course the charger that just died was the Chinese knockoff, not the real one. In its defense, it probably had 3x the lifetime use of the genuine one and lots more unexpected yanking disconnects.
The rest of my machine is showing age too. The display crashes to black and it needs a reboot about once a week. The detachable keyboard is also getting kinda wonky, and those are $60 as Chinese knockoffs or $120 as genuine.
My device was top-spec when bought. A whole new tablet of the latest version of the same base model & form factor at the same spec with all accessories is ~US$1300, so not too bad. A current top spec machine, so the moral equivalent of what I had when new, with all new accessories comes to US$2200. That would sting a bit.
Keep it, replace the flaky peripherals, or get a new one? Hmm.
I have ordered some thermal paste from Amazon, and will give that a try over the weekend. I have no idea what to look for, but will dismantle the heatsink on anything that has one and poke around a bit.
If you’re computer is over 5 years old and it’s acting up, buy a new one. Brand new: new HD, new vid card, all in a package put together by a major international corporation. Just start with a clean slate - don’t drag any of your old problems forward with you. Anything else would be throwing good money after bad, good time after bad, and good thought after bad. It’s not worth it.
Don’t go doing that. Locate the CPU cooler block (hint: it’s on top of your CPU), remove that (likely four screws or maybe two clips), clean off the old paste residue with isopropyl alcohol, apply a small (“pea sized”) amount of fresh paste to the CPU, reinstall the cooler (tighten the screws in an X-shaped pattern a little bit at a time for even pressure across the CPU) and you’re good.
Other things with a heatsink in there aren’t intended to be casually removed. Some of them, such as your GPU or VRM, may use pads instead of paste that you can tear and now need to order new thermal pads.
Do you own pets, particularly cats? One of my friends had a similar issue that was resolved after checking their PSU fan vents and blowing out enough cat hair to knit a small glove. Inside the case itself wasn’t too bad, but a fair amount got into the PSU where it wasn’t obvious by casual inspection but was definitely noticeable after putting half a duster can through it
No cats. I do seem to generate a lot of dust, but I’ve cleaned that out more than once since this started happening, so I’m doing the best I can on that front. Who knows what I will discover after I disassemble bits.
Something that is going to be an ongoing problem is that Adobe now won’t update without a modern CPU. So you’re right, I will have to make the move to a new PC eventually. But I can wait.
Though maybe Cyber Monday will have some deals that will bring this decision forward.
Obligatory warning not to disassemble your PSU as, even unplugged, the capacitors hold a lethal charge. If it looks dusty inside, blow it out the best you can through the vents.
In my experience, the inside of your computer isn’t the only place where crud accumulates - your hard drives also pick up crap as the years go by, bits of software you installed and forgot about, weird settings and half-deleted files. It just builds up and causes problems, and no matter how often you clean them, there will always be something left behind, messing things up and slowing things down. Every few years it’s good to just start over.
So I finally decided to do this thing. I unhooked my CPU heatsink and fan, carefully cleaned off the old paste, applied the new paste, and then tried to reconnect the fan and heatsink.
Which is where it all went wrong. The pins bent, snapped, and now it won’t lock securely.
I think I’d better order a new one before it falls out.
I did not remove the CPU. It’s not those pins. It was the mounting clip pins on the fan, that slot into the holes on the MB, so that it stays tight to the CPU. They bent and broke when I tried to remove it, so I couldn’t put them back in the holes comfortably.
The good news is, even though it may be precarious for now, the PC itself is actually running a bit faster, so the thermal paste has definitely done something.
After reseating the fan with thermal paste it seemed to be working okay for a couple of weeks, but then it started to get hot here (it’s summer) and then I think the bodged reseating slipped a mm or two and now it went back to shutting down again.
Luckily I had anticipated the need for a whole new fan and had ordered one, which I’ve just installed. Immediately the CPU temp has settled to about 20°C lower. Here’s hoping it holds, because a new PC is not the hassle I want right now, inevitable though it may be.