Replacing a Power Supply in a PC
So I’m not going to make this procedure more complex than it has to be. It’s a very easy and inexpensive thing to do, but (and this is a giant sized but) trying to discover that your pc’s power supply is the culprit IS very hard for the average computer user. The main way you can tell is the computer wont do ANYTHING. No kind of lights, or sounds, or fan motion. That could be your CPU if you’ve been fooling around inside your computer or you’re positive you’ve had a recent electrical disruption to your home and you don’t have a surge protector. But more than likely a very dead computer will mean the power supply is dead; they die all the time. No big deal.
You can buy a very expensive one, and you can buy one that churns out lots of watts. But here’s a 450 watt unit I got at for 20 bucks at MicroCenter. And that’s another thing to keep in mind; if you go to a Best Buy, Radio Shack or a
The power supply inside a computer is the big thing at the back. It’s usually held on by 4 screws.
To get it out, first take of one of the side panels. If you’re facing the computer from the back, the right side panel is usually (well 100 percent of the time) the access side.
The first big surprise is how messy things look at first. But take a second look and you’ll notice that, actually, there’s not that much stuff in there. Basically about 12 parts. The power supply usually directly connects to less than half a dozen. And essentially you’re going to do a one for one exchange. You’ll disconnect the old unit and then connect the new one where you just disconnected. One thing at time. Do not disconnect the old power supply from everything and then pick up the new one and say “ok now what?”
In the above image I’ve got arrows pointing to the drive connections (hard, floppy and cd/dvd). But really your big connection is a grouped plug that connects directly to the mother board. It has a little latch on it, so you’ll need to wiggle it loose.
Whenever I extract a power supply I feel like I just caught some sort of techno-critter that’s climbed aboard my spaceship.
And like I said at the beginning. It’s hard to tell when a power supply goes bad. Here I’ve got the old one next to the new one and the old one LOOKS better.
Related posts:
