Power supply woes

TM2 Rampage

I put my old system into my parents' case. Same power supply from my old system.

Turned it on, went into BIOS to look around, and then a SSHSHSHSHHSS sound came from the case. The comp turned off immediately, and I smelled burning plastic coming from the PSU. Later, looking inside the PSU behind its fan, there appears to be a melted fuse thingie in there.

Power supply was an Antec Truepower 380W (one +12V rail at 24 amps).

MSI PT880 Neo mobo
Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
ATI Radeon 9500
onboard sound
3 DVD burners on the parents' comp
one Seagate Ultra ATA HDD 120GB


So for a replacement PSU I bought this thing " Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC 430W ATX Power Supply "
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153023
from a local retailer.

Then I found out that it only has one +12V rail at 18 amps.
EDIT: Thus the negative reviews for this PSU and a review site say that this thing is weak shitty shit from a butt. This site http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/332/8 says that it's really a 350 W PSU in disguise.

But, a lot of those 5 star user reviews say that it runs their rather new high-end-ish gaming systems.

So should I take this thing out of the package and try it? What could have went wrong the first time, anyway?

Transparent

By fuse thingie do you mean capacitor?

It's a common manufacturing defect, known as capacitor plague.

TM2 Rampage

Transparent wrote: »

By fuse thingie do you mean capacitor?

It's a common manufacturing defect, known as capacitor plague.

Ah, thanks. I'll look into that. Someone else also told me that that was probably what caused my power supply to die.



Well anyway, I plugged in that Thermaltake thing for the hell of it, since my dad told me to go ahead and just do it. It works, amazingly. Well, the box says there's a 3 year warranty so I can probably relax.

.kbf?

TM2 Rampage wrote: »

Then I found out that it only has one +12V rail at 18 amps.

Taken form wikipedia

"Because implementing one current limit per wire is prohibitively expensive, and the limit is far larger than the reasonable current draw through a single wire, manufacturers typically group several wires together and apply the current limit to the wire as a group. Obviously, if the group is limited to 240 VA, so is each wire in it. Typically, a power supply will guarantee at least 17 A at 12 V by having a current limit of 18.5 A, plus or minus 8%. Thus, it is guaranteed to supply at least 17 A, and guaranteed to cut off before 20 A.

These are the so-called "multiple power supply rails". They are not fully independent; they are all connected to a single high-current 12V source inside the power supply, but have separate current limit circuitry. The current limit groups are documented so the user can avoid placing too many high-current loads in the same group.

This works in the same way, and for the same reason, as the many small circuit breakers in a circuit breaker panel as well as the main supply breaker. And just like typical domestic wiring, multiple outlets are connected to each circuit breaker for reasons of cost.

Originally, a power supply featuring "multiple +12V rails" implied one able to deliver more than 20 A of +12V power, and was seen as a good thing. However, people found the need to balance loads across many +12V rails inconvenient. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that the assignment of connectors to rails is done at manufacturing time, and it is not always possible to move a given load to a different rail.

Rather than add more current limit circuits, many manufacturers are ignoring the requirement and providing "single-rail" power supplies that omit the current limit circuitry. Although capable of starting a fire under the appropriate circumstances, there have not been a noticeable increase in accidental fires, and as of 2008, product safety testers like Underwriters Laboratories continue to approve the supplies."

So basically, with that system, you would probably never notice the difference between this PSU and one that had the same specs but with multiple rails

Macro9

I have that TR2 430 in a system with a 965p mobo, e6600 C2D, 2 HDDS, one dvd burner and a 7900GS KO. It has been running strong for over a year. I don't know how it would do with a newer card though.