A weird power supply issue cost me an entire afternoon

I had a client's PC that would boot for a few seconds then die. I swapped the RAM, the CPU, even the motherboard. Nothing worked. I finally found the problem after 4 hours: a single slightly bent pin on the 24-pin power connector on the PSU itself. It was making a bad connection. I carefully straightened it with tweezers and it fired right up. Has anyone else seen a PSU connector cause that much trouble?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_diana2mo ago

Ever check the wall outlet for weird voltage?

alice_barnes352mo ago

Wait you can actually check that? How do you even do it?

fiona_nelson5116d ago

Yeah I actually found out by accident. I was trying to figure out why my lamp was flickering in one spot and my buddy @the_diana told me to check the outlet. So I got one of those little plug-in testers from the hardware store for like 10 bucks. You just stick it in the outlet and the lights tell you if something's off. Turned out one of the wires was loose in the wall. It's really simple once you know what you're looking at.